ied and annotated bibliographies for
the interpretation of savage society (Chicago, 1909).

CHAPTER I

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES[2]

I. SOCIOLOGY AND "SCIENTIFIC" HISTORY

Sociology first gained recognition as an independent science with the
publication, between 1830 and 1842, of Auguste Comte's _Cours de
philosophie positive_. Comte did not, to be sure, create sociology. He
did give it a name, a program, and a place among the sciences.

Comte's program for the new science proposed an extension to politics
and to history of the positive methods of the natural sciences. Its
practical aim was to establish government on the secure foundation of an
exact science and give to the predictions of history something of the
precision of mathematical formulae.

We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of
prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of
exactness compatible with their higher complexity.
Comprehending the three characteristics of political science
which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena
supposes, first, that we have abandoned the region of
metaphysical idealities, to assume the ground of observed
realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to
observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased
to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state
of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course
of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that
permanent political action is limited by determinate laws,
since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by
the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine,
no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may
concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social
philosophy on this one great attribute of scientific
prevision.[3]

Comte proposed, in short, to make government a technical science and
politics a profession. He looked forward to a time when legislation,
based on a scientific study of human nature, would assume the character
of natural law. The earlier and more elementary sciences, particularly
physics and chemistry, had given man control over external nature; the
last science, sociology, was to give man control over himself.

Men were long in learning that Man's power of modifying
phenomena can