280 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
etc. Indeed, to see all of these workers searching the supreme law, the cause which governs all causes, the key that opens all locks, recalls the efforts of the alchemists to discover the philosopher's stone. The result has been a recoil rather than progress. For Comte, at least, sociology was an integral science of all of the social facts ; no category of phenomena was systematically excluded.
Some writers attempt to find a distinct field for sociology by assigning to it the consideration of what is general, as distinguished from what is special. For instance, Stuart Mill defines sociology as having for an object the consideration of the "state of society," including only the most important social phenomena, such as the form of government, laws and customs, moral culture, etc. Thus sociology is made indepen- dent of the other social sciences and is to furnish deductions as a basis for them. Manifestly the position of Mill is untenable. To generalize from so many different phases of life is a task too large for one man, and furthermore the definition of "general" is vague.
Mr. Giddings uses "general" in another sense. He considers the elementary forms of social life as distinguished from the higher and more complex forms. His sociology is a science of first principles which are to be a basis for the special social sciences. Other sciences suppose sociology, but it does not suppose them. Unfor- tunately these elementary forms do not exist anywhere in isolation and available for observation. The most elementary societies are complex and contain all the elements which differentiate in the course of evolution. To limit the sociology to special societies is to reduce it to a study of comparative ethnology. The general is found only in the particular, and that which is called human association is a characteristic of all societies. There is already a science which studies the laws of population demology. Mr. Giddings goes into still other fields of science, discussing the family, etc. The object thus assigned to sociology is indeterminate ; it is a sociology which determines itself, arbitrarily according to the personal inclination or taste of the author.
The sociology of Messrs. Tarde, Gumplowicz, Ward, and others would be still more difficult to define and separate from the special social sciences.
There is no need to isolate such or such aspect of society and make it the object of a new science, as there is no need that biology treat such and such aspect of vital phenomena rather than another. Sociology is nothing if it is not the science of societies, considered altogether. The multitude of the phenomena renders it necessary that the study of society be divided into specialties. Hence sociology is only the system of the sociological sciences. E. DURKHEIM ET E. P'AUCONNET, "Sociologie et sciences sociales," in Revue philosophique, No. 5, May, 1903.
J. D.
The Race Problem. Three years ago I said that, unless heroic measures were adopted, we should soon have civil war between the races. The Evansville riot is an example of what we may expect tomorrow wherever negroes are numerous, and very little later in such cities as New York and Boston and Philadelphia. The North is already almost as fully inoculated as the South, and the young white American of the lower classes is becoming educated everywhere with appalling rapidity to understand that any negro accused of crime is public spoil, to be played with as long as the fun will last. Attempts at general massacres of negroes are certain to be the next thing in order, and collective reprisals by negroes are equally certain.
Negro-lynching is already a permitted exception in the midst of our civilization. Bloody orgy and diseased idea emotion have struck an unholy partnership, impunity is agreed upon, and an anonymous mob is the power to which the license is accorded. The newspapers are doing all they can to convert the custom into an established institution. I first learned of the recent negro-burning at Wilmington by seeing the scare head of a paper which a man on a seat before me in a car was reading. "Charred. in Chains, Lynching Well Done," was printed in tall capital letters in this Boston daily. One of our most influential New York weeklies, formerly an inde- pendent journal, printed an editorial on the same atrocity, of which the only influence on a susceptible mind could be to make it seem excusable. Everywhere we find edu- cated men and women making light of the baseness, as being, after all, only a rude sort of justice, just as old-fashioned Christians used to say that Jews must continue to
