ual. If society should become useless to individuals it could not exist. It is necessary, therefore to inquire by what individual laws, biological and anthropological, the individual has been brought to form society, and to bring about all the successive transformations it has undergone, principally by the various adaptations of the individual to his natural environment. Now, while it is true that the method of sociology is biological, it must be said that Spencer has not defined what he means by sociology. And in reality it may be said that sociology is not yet supplied with a true and proper definition.[1]
Now, it may not be possible to give a definition without first forming a method of investigation. The fact remains, however, of the scientific inefficiency of the historical method taken alone.[2] To say nothing of the errors in which the German school which proposed it is involved, confined as it is to the study of historic humanity, it does not investigate prehistoric humanity; and moreover, if it has the merit of showing the instability of social phenomena, it must necessarily be supplemented by history, and by ethnography, which we may call contemporaneous history. This is precisely the scientific tendency which, owing to the example of Anguilli and Vanni, is more and more manifesting itself in Italy.[3]
Editor of the Rivista di Sociologia, Rome.
Translated from the Italian by I. W. Howerth.
- ↑ In this connection the article of Professor H. H. Powers, Terminology and the Sociological Conference, published in Philadelphia, 1893, may be consulted with profit.
- ↑ G. Fiamingo, Saggio de pre-sociologia, Catania, 1894; also Insufficienza del metodo storico nella sociologia moderna, Milan, 1894.
- ↑ In Italy sociology is not yet recognized by the state as an official branch of instruction. Free courses are offered, however, by Professor Vanni in the University of Parma, by Professor Arturaro in that of Genoa, by Professor Majorana in that of Catania, and by Professor Cesca in that of Messina. In 1893 Professor G. Fiamingo, assisted by Professors Vadata-Papale, of the University of Catania, and Virgilii, of the University of Sienna, began to publish the Rivista di Sociologia. It is the second sociological review in order of time after La Revue Internationale de Sociologie in Paris. During the present year there have been the following changes in the management of this review: Professor Vadata-Papale, being entirely occupied in original scientific research, abandoned its direction and was succeeded by Professors Sergi and Tangorra, of the University of Rome. This review, published monthly, contains about 80 large pages and numbers among its contributors the most illustrious sociologists, both Italian and foreign.
