The Project Gutenberg EBook of Society, by Henry Kalloch Rowe

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Title: Society
Its Origin and Development

Author: Henry Kalloch Rowe

Release Date: May 25, 2007 [EBook #21609]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SOCIETY

ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

BY
HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Ph.D.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN NEWTON
THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

PREFACE

In studying biology it is convenient to make cross-sections of
laboratory specimens in order to determine structure, and to watch
plants and animals grow in order to determine function. There seems to
be no good reason why social life should not be studied in the same
way. To take a child in the home and watch it grow in the midst of the
life of the family, the community, and the larger world, and to cut
across group life so as to see its characteristics, its interests, and
its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to
obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study
sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to
confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions.

It is not because of a lack of appreciation of the abstract that the
emphasis of this book is on the concrete. It is written as an
introduction to the study of the principles of sociology, and it may
well be used as a prelude to the various social sciences. It is
natural that trained sociologists should prefer to discuss the
profound problems of their science, and should plunge their pupils
into material for study where they are soon beyond their depth; much
of current life seems so obvious and so simple that it is easy to
for