vernment,
| | etc.
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=To make sociology real make it egocentric=

The way is now clear for the two next steps, the concepts of causation
and development. Here again why not follow the egocentric plan of
starting with what the student knows? Ask him to write a brief but
careful autobiography answering the questions--How have I come to be
what I am? What influences personal or otherwise have played upon
me?[34] The student is almost certain to lay hold of the principle of
determining or controlling forces, and of evolution or change; he may
even be able to analyze rather clearly the different types of control
which have cooperated in his development.

From this start it is easy to develop the genetic concept of social
life. The individual grows from simple to complex. Why not the race?
Here introduce a comparison between the social group known to the
student, a retarded group (such as MacClintock's or Vincent's study of
the Kentucky Mountaineers[35]) or a frontier community, and a
contemporary primitive tribe (say, the Hupa or Seri Indians, Negritos,
Bontoc Igorot, Bangala, Kafirs, Yakuts, Eskimo, or Andaman Islanders).
Require a detailed comparison arranged in parallel columns on such
points as size, variety of occupation, food supply, security of life,
institutions, family life, language, religion, superstitions, and
opportunities for culture.

These two points of departure--the student's interest in his own
personality and the community influences that have molded it, and the
comparative study of a primitive group--should harmonize the two chief
rival views of teaching sociologists; namely, those who urge the
approach to sociology through anthropology and those who find the best
avenue through the concrete knowledge of the _socius_. Moreover, it lays
a foundation for a discussion of the antiquity of man, his kinship with
other living things, and his evolution; that is, the biological
presupposition of human society. Here let me testify to the great help
which Osborn's photographs[36] of reconstructions of the
Pithecanthropos, Piltdown, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon types have
rendered in clearing away prejudices and in vivifying the remote past.
Religious apprehensions in particular may be allayed also by referring
students to articles on race, man, evolution, anthropology, etc., in
such compilatio