NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 443-493.

BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 373-392.

DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 351-361.

SKELTON: _Socialism_, pages 16-61.

CARNEGIE: _Problems of To-day_, pages 121-139.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY

384. =Sociology vs. Social Philosophy.=--Sociology is one of the
recent sciences. It had to wait for the scientific method of exact
investigation and the scientific principle of forming conclusions upon
abundant data. Naturally, theories of society were held long before
any science came into existence, but they were of value only as
philosophizing. Some of these theories were published and attracted
the attention of thoughtful persons, but they did not affect social
life. Some of them developed into philosophies of history, based on
the preconceived ideas of their authors. Now and then in the first
part of the nineteenth century certain social experiments were made in
the form of co-operative communities, which it was fondly hoped would
become practical methods for a better social order, but they almost
uniformly failed because they were artificial rather than of natural
growth, and because they were based on principles that public opinion
had not yet sanctioned. The story of the predecessors of modern
sociology naturally is preliminary to the history of sociology itself.

385. =Philosophers and Prophets.=--Two classes of men in ancient time
worked on the problems of society, one from the practical standpoint,
the other from the philosophic. One group of names includes the great
statesmen and lawgivers, like Moses, who laid the foundations of the
Hebrew nation and gave it the nucleus of a legal system; Solon and
Lycurgus, traditional lawgivers of Athens and Sparta, and several of
the earlier kings and later emperors of Rome. The other group is
composed of men who thought much about human life and disseminated
their opinions by writing and teaching. For the most part they were
idealistic philosophers, but their influence was far-reaching in time.
In the list belong Plato, who in his _Republic_ outlined an ideal
society that was the prototype of later fanciful commonwealths;
Aristotle, who made a real contribution to political science in his
_Politics_; Cicero, who himself participated actively in government
and wrote out his theories or spoke them in public, and Augustine, who
gave his conception of a Christian state in t