utility of
my attempt to analyze the population of a part of London.[44]

This vast study did, indeed, throw great light, not only upon poverty in
London, but upon human nature in general. On the other hand, it raised
more questions than it settled and, if it demonstrated anything, it was
the necessity, as Booth suggests, for a restatement of the problem.

Sociology seems now, however, in a way to become, in some fashion or
other, an experimental science. It will become so as soon as it can
state existing problems in such a way that the results in one case will
demonstrate what can and should be done in another. Experiments are
going on in every field of social life, in industry, in politics, and in
religion. In all these fields men are guided by some implicit or
explicit theory of the situation, but this theory is not often stated in
the form of a hypothesis and subjected to a test of the negative
instances. We have, if it is permitted to make a distinction between
them, investigation rather than research.

What, then, in the sense in which the expression is here used, is social
research? A classification of problems will be a sort of first aid in
the search for an answer.

1. _Classification of social problems._--Every society and every social
group, _capable of consistent action_, may be regarded as an
organization of the wishes of its members. This means that society rests
on, and embodies, the appetites and natural desires of the individual
man; but it implies, also, that wishes, in becoming _organized_, are
necessarily disciplined and controlled in the interest of the group as a
whole.

Every such society or social group, even the most ephemeral, will
ordinarily have (a) some relatively formal method of defining its aim
and formulating its policies, making them explicit, and (b) some
machinery, functionary, or other arrangement for realizing its aim and
carrying its policies into effect. Even in the family there is
government, and this involves something that corresponds to legislation,
adjudication, and administration.

Social groups, however, maintain their organizations, agencies, and all
formal methods of behavior on a basis and in a setting of instinct, of
habit, and of tradition which we call human nature. Every social group
has, or tends to have, its own culture, what Sumner calls "folkways,"
and this culture, imposing its patterns upon the natural man, gives him
that particular individuality w