300 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
a larger generalization of facts than has previously been accomplished. They have detected in the phenomena of human desire and volition estimates of more than one species of utility. They are accordingly using such inventories of human acts and motives as they can make available to reveal contained evidences of habitual standards of valua- tion in general. It is along this line that Professor Patten is proceed- ing, and with prospect of reaching important results.
Accordingly it is entirely false to put the method of the Austrian school, or of any other positive investigation, under the descriptive term "abstraction," over against the method of observation and classification and interpretation; as though they were mutually exclusive. There can be no generalization of scientific value that is not the generaliza- tion of classified facts, i.e., of an " inventory." On the other hand, classified facts, or inventories, are no more a completed body of scien- tific knowledge than the words of the Iliad arranged in alphabetical order in a glossary would be a poem. Giddings succeeds in making it appear that there is not only an unbridged chasm but a principle of hostility between arranged facts and rational interpretation. His pre- sumption is that explanation must be anterior to knowledge of the facts. Abstraction in his usage, if not in his definition, is speculation apart from data. On the contrary, scientific generalization is percep- tion of uniformities within the data. According to Giddings, abstrac- tion is withdrawal to a remote distance from facts for undisturbed rumination. The product of this ruminating process is a substance of truth to be added to facts, if the thinker be so unfortunate at last as to encounter reality. Giddings has apparently no working idea of abstraction proper viz., contemplation of a distinguishable group or series of phenomena, regarded temporarily without reference to the bearing of other actual phenomena, from which they have been concep- tually separated for convenience of inspection.
Nothing more is needed to prove that this book does not fulfill its promise of furnishing the basis of a system of social interpretation. It is worth while, however, to pay a little more attention to the alleged principle "consciousness of kind." Giddings brings it forward with the modest introduction :
.... that new datum which has been sought for hitherto without success, but which can now no longer remain unperceived in the narrowing range of inquiry. Sociology must go right from this time forth .... because it has tried all possible ways of going wrong. (P. 17.)
