gradually come to define themselves in history. The positions outlined in the developments already referred to which have come down through Hume and Huxley, through Kant and Hegel, through Grotius and Savigny, through Roscher and Schmoller, through the expression which English utilitarianism has reached in Herbert Spencer as influenced by the English theory of the rights of the individual on the one hand, and in Marxian Socialism as influenced by the Latin conception of the omnipotence of the State on the other, have thus all their place, meaning and scientific relations in the modern study of sociology. It must be considered that the theory of organic evolution by natural selection and the historical method will continue in an increasing degree to influence the science of society.
The sociological law that “the social process is primarily evolving in the individual not the qualities which contribute to his own efficiencyThe Claim of Sociology as the Master Science. in conflict with his fellows, but those qualities which contribute to society's efficiency in the conflict through which it is gradually rising towards a more organic type,” carries us into the innermost recesses of the human mind and controls the science of psychology. For it is thus not the human mind which is consciously constructing the social process in evolution; it is the social process which is constructing the human mind in evolution. This is the ultimate fact which raises sociology to its true position as the master science. Nor is there any materialism in such a conception. It is in keeping with the highest spiritual ideal of man that the only conception of Truth or the Absolute which the human mind can hold at present is that which is being evolved in it in relation to its own environment which is in the social process.
Authorities.—It has been one of the results of the conditions affecting sociology in the past, that many of the principal contributions to the science of society are not usually included in lists of sociological references. The following are mentioned only as indicating or suggesting others in the same classes of equal or perhaps greater importance. The dates given are usually those of the first edition of a work.
Introductory.—Darwin, Origin of Species (1859); Descent of Man, 1871 (chapters dealing with society); Wallace, Darwinism (1889); Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin (1892); Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin (1894). Economics, Historical.—Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, part i. (1888), part ii. (1893); Schmoller, The Mercantile System (1884); Roscher, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland (1874); Nys, History of Economics (Trans. Dryhurst, 1899). Ethics, Historical.—Sidgwick, History of Ethics (1886); Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics (1893); Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906). Primitive Society.—Lubbock, Origin of Civilization (1870); Tylor, Anthropology (1881); Quatrefages, Human Species (Eng. trans. 1879); Lang, Custom and Myth (1884); Maine, Ancient Law (1861); Early History of Institutions (1875); Early Law and Custom (1883); Frazer, Golden Bough (1890); Early History of the Kingship (1905).
General.—Spencer, Synthetic Philosophy (Principles of Biology, Principles of Sociology and Principles of Ethics); Kidd, Social Evolution (1894); Principles of Western Civilization (1902); Individualism and After; Two Principal Laws of Sociology: Bologna (1908); Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie (1897); Ward, Dynamic Sociology; Outlines of Sociology (1898); Flint, Philosophy of History in Europe (1874); Historical Philosophy in France (1894); Bagehot, Physics and Politics; Ratzenhofer, Die soziologische Erkenntnis (1898); Giddings, Principles of Sociology (1896); Tarde, Étude de psychologie sociale (1898); Stuckenberg, Introduction to the Study of Sociology (1898); Stephen, The English Utilitarians (1900); J. S. Mill, System of Logic (1843); On Liberty (1859); Utilitarianism (1861); Conte, Philosophie positive (6 vols., 1830-1842, Eng. trans., condensed by Martineau, in 2 vols.); Baldwin, Social Psychology; Ritchie, Natural Rights (1895); Bluntschli, The Theory of the State (Eng. trans. 1892); Wright, Outline of Practical Sociology (1899); Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (1874); Elements of Politics (1901); Philosophy, its Scope (1902); Taylor, The Problem of Conduct (1901); Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (particularly 2nd Division), and Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic; McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908); Schiller, Studies in Humanism (1907); James, Pragmatism (1907); Fairbanks, Introduction to Sociology (1896); Pollock, History of the Science of Politics (1890); Maine, Popular Government (1885); Morley, Rousseau (1873); Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (1878); Burke (1879); Austin, Theory of Jurisprudence (1861-1863); Holland, Elements of Jurisprudence (parts i., iii. and iv., 1880); Studies in International Law (1898); Westlake, International Law (1894); Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Oxf. ed., 1879; Sohm, Institutes of Roman Law; Sandars, Institutes of Justinian; Le Roy Beaulieu, L'État moderne et ses fonctions; Huxley, Evolution and Ethics (1894); Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols; Zarathustra; Loria, Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale (French trans.); Pearson, National Life and Character (1893); Vincent, The Social Mind in Education (1897); Marx, Kapital (1867, Eng. trans. 1887); Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (Eng. trans., Aveling, 1892); Kirkup, An Inquiry into Socialism (1907); George, Progress and Poverty; Mazel, La Synergie sociale (1896); Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution (1898); Ross, Social Control (1901); Mackenzie, Social Philosophy (1895); Hobson, The Social Problem (1901); Fabian Essays; Rousseau, Social Contract; Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Two Treatises of Government; Webbs, Industrial Democracy (1897); History of Trades Unionism (1894); Booth, Life and Labour of the People (1891-1897); Patten, The Theory of Prosperity (1902); Wallas, Human Nature in Politics (1908); Urwick, Luxury and Waste (1908); Small, The Scope of Sociology (1902).
- (B. K.*)
SOCRATES, son of the statuary Sophroniscus and of the midwife Phaenarete, was born at Athens, not earlier than 471 nor later than May or June 469 B.C. As a youth he received the customary instruction in gymnastics and music; and in after years he made himself acquainted with geometry and astronomy and studied the methods and the doctrines of the leaders of Greek thought and culture. He began life as a sculptor; and in the 2nd century A.D. a group of the Graces, supposed to be his work, was still to be seen on the road to the Acropolis. But he soon abandoned art and gave himself to what may best be called education, conceiving that he had a divine commission, witnessed by oracles, dreams and signs, not indeed to teach any positive doctrine, but to convict men of ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, and by so doing to promote their intellectual and moral improvement. He was on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished of his Athenian contemporaries, and, at any rate in later life, was personally known to very many of his fellow citizens. His domestic relations were, it is said, unhappy. The shrewishness of his wife Xanthippe became proverbial with the ancients, as it still is with ourselves. Aristotle, in his remarks upon genius and its degeneracy (Rhet. ii. 15), speaks of Socrates's sons as dull and fatuous; and in Xenophon's Memorabilia, one of them, Lamprocles, receives a formal rebuke for undutiful behaviour towards his mother. Socrates served as a hoplite at Potidaea (432-429), where on one occasion he saved the life of Alcibiades, at Delium (424), and at Amphipolis (422), In these campaigns his bravery and endurance were conspicuous. But, while he thus performed the ordinary duties of a Greek citizen with credit, he neither attained nor sought political position. His “divine voice,” he said, had warned him to refrain from politics, presumably because office would have entailed the sacrifice of his principles and the abandonment of his proper vocation. Yet in 406 he was a member of the senate; and on the first day of the trial of the victors of Arginusae, being president of the prytanis, he resisted—first, in conjunction with his colleagues, afterwards, when they yielded, alone—the illegal and unconstitutional proposal of Callixenus, that the fate of the eight generals should be decided by a single vote of the assembly. Not less courageous than this opposition to the “civium ardor prava jubentium” was his disregard of the “vultus instantis tyranni” two years later. During the reign of terror of 404 the Thirty, anxious to implicate in their crimes men of repute who might otherwise have opposed their plans, ordered live citizens, one of whom was Socrates, to go to Salamis and bring thence their destined victim Leon. Socrates alone disobeyed. But, though he was exceptionally obnoxious to the Thirty—as appears, not only in this incident, but also in their threat of punishment under a special ordinance forbidding “the teaching of the art of argument”—it was reserved for the reconstituted democracy to bring him to trial and to put him to death. In 399, four years after the restoration and the amnesty, he was indicted as an offender against public morality. His accusers were Meletus the poet, Anytus the tanner and Lycon the orator, all of them members of the democratic or patriot party who had returned from Phyle with Thrasybulus. The accusation ran thus: “Socrates is guilty, firstly, of denying the gods recognized by the state and introducing new divinities, and, secondly, of corrupting the young.” In his unpremeditated defence, so far from seeking to conciliate his judges, Socrates
