ting from the laws of nature.
Finally, you possess knowledge of the man, scientific knowledge
of him, in both his individual and social relations.[79]

After all that may be said for the experimental novel, however, its
primary aim, like that of history, is appreciation and understanding,
not generalization and abstract formulas. Insight and sympathy, the
mystical sense of human solidarity, expressed in the saying "to
comprehend all is to forgive all," this fiction has to give. And these
are materials which the sociologist cannot neglect. As yet there is no
autobiography or biography of an egocentric personality so convincing as
George Meredith's _The Egoist_. The miser is a social type; but there
are no case studies as sympathetic and discerning as George Eliot's
_Silas Marner_. Nowhere in social science has the technique of case
study developed farther than in criminology; yet Dostoevsky's
delineation of the self-analysis of the murderer in _Crime and
Punishment_ dwarfs all comparison outside of similar studies in
fiction. The function of the so-called psychological or sociological
novel stops, however, with its presentation of the individual incident
or case; it is satisfied by the test of its appeal to the experience of
the reader. The scientific study of human nature proceeds a step
farther; it seeks generalizations. From the case studies of history and
of literature it abstracts the laws and principles of human behavior.

3. Research in the Field of Original Nature

Valuable materials for the study of human nature have been accumulated
in archaeology, ethnology, and folklore. William G. Sumner, in his book
_Folkways_, worked through the ethnological data and made it available
for sociological use. By classification and comparison of the customs of
primitive peoples he showed that cultural differences were based on
variations in folkways and mores in adaptation to the environment,
rather than upon fundamental differences in human nature.

The interests of research have resulted in a division of labor between
the fields of original and acquired nature in man. The examination of
original tendencies has been quite properly connected with the study of
inheritance. For the history of research in this field, the student is
referred to treatises upon genetics and evolution and to the works of
Lamarck, Darwin, DeVries, Weismann, and Mendel. Recent discoveries in
regard to the mechanism of biological inherita