2Q4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
sciences would evidently be the science of an abstracted element of the phenomena of human association. We have a relatively complete science of the laws of human action so far as the desire for wealth is the determining impulse. Possibly it is feasible and desirable to construct similar sciences of these other species of activity. It seems to me that Giddings has at times really been working at the foundation of such a science of actions that seek satisfaction in "sociability." This is certainly not the programme carried out by the book as a whole, yet the proposed principle, "consciousness of kind," in so far as positive agency can be predicated of it at all, would seem to afford a plausible hypothesis for the explanation solely of phenomena within the special category "sociability." This use of "consciousness of kind" might be parallel with that of "economic self-interest" in economic science.
Inasmuch as Giddings clearly does not mean, on the whole, so to restrict the field of sociology, the confusion in the book is hopeless. There is no constant and consistent view of the relation of "social" to other phenomena in, of, or pertaining to "association." Are "social" phenomena inclusive or exclusive of "economic" phenomena, for example? Giddings sometimes apparently makes "social" include all the phenomena of association. Thus:
Finally, economic, political and cultural phenomena are only differentiations of social phenomena; they are not so unlike the more general phases of association that we can speak of them as differentiated from social phenomena.[1]
Taking Giddings at his word, that the "social" includes the economic, does he actually mean that economic self-interest—the operation of which he of course does not dispute is a manifestation of the consciousness of kind, and that this alleged underlying state of consciousness affords any explanation of forms of consciousness—economic self-interest, for example—which according to his dictum are derived from it? He has the courage to say so!
Sociology studies the phenomena that are consequent upon one state in particular, namely, the consciousness of kind. In like manner the subordination of the special social sciences to sociology is another necessary conclusion from our first principle. The consciousness of kind undergoes integration and differentiation. Sometimes its differentiated forms conflict among themselves, or with the parent form. They then often appear as motives
- ↑ P. 27. The Italics are Giddings'.
