METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 37 S
the "energetics" of sociality we must go to appreciation; for it seems to me that those motives or inner springs which lead to the interaction of conscious wills, and which are such an essential and self-expressive part of human life and activity, are beyond the sphere of description. They are part of our private selves, but are indispensable in the search for social causality.
Mr. Ward says that the subject-matter of sociology is human achievement ; 88 but what men do is, after all, their natures work- ing themselves out; so that the explanation comes back to the selves of the individuals, and so is appreciative. 84 It is a getting behind phenomena ; and this is practically what he says when he holds that in pure sociology the object pursued is the inner nature of society. 85 Now, the inner nature of society is, of course, the individuals.
Just so soon as society is more than a mere aggregate of indi- viduals, just so soon as there is some organization, there must be some purpose or aim of which it is the fulfilment. Such an aim in the lower forms of organization can arise on entirely empirical grounds ; but when the case of the higher forms comes up, purely empirical grounds will be found insufficient, and for explanation we must go back to the inner nature 38 of the individual in whom, potentially, this form has existed; and so we are again in appreciation.
In the sphere of what Mr. Ward calls " practical " sociology, or Dr. Stuckenberg " sociological ethics," the judgment of value asserts itself very strongly. In the lower departments of pure sociology there was much classifying and generalizing, and so exact description; but here description becomes inexact and shades over into appreciation. This is, indeed, a very normal thought-process, similar to the shading of the judgment of truth into the judgment of value. In this side of the question, sociology takes in the possibilities of development, and so, on the basis of an
- Pure Sociology, p. 15.
14 For detailed argument for an appreciative moment in the self see Part II of this article.
- Op. tit., p. 4-
" MACKENZIE. Introduction to Social Philosophy, p. 34.
