SOCIOLOGY AS DISTINCT FROM SOCIAL SCIENCES 47
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basis of a difference in factual content. Economics and
church polity, the history of education and of morals, poli-
tics and theories of sexual relations, have divided the realm
of the social phenomena into separate regions of research.
Sociology as a special science, however, rests on an
entirely different abstraction from the social phenomena
and results from viewing the socio-historical actuality from
a quite different standpoint. While economics is distin-
guished from politics merely by the difference in content
of the social phenomena which it investigates, sociology is
distinguished from both by the fact that it treats the form
of socialization and not its content. The social sciences
find their subject-matter by drawing lines through the his-
torical actuality which encircle similar interest contents.
Sociology comes into existence by drawing a line which, by
intersecting all those already drawn, detaches the pure
fact of socialization from its connections with the various
contents. It may be that the periphery of this range of
problems temporarily or permanently comes into contact
with other circles and that boundary lines are vague; but
the center remains none the less fixed and determined.
Social facts and psychological knowledge may both play a
role in the explanation of the form of socialization. This
does not prevent the sociological problem from being dis-
tinct from both the psychological and the social problem.
Sociology is interested in society as form, while the social
sciences are interested in society as content.
The distinction between sociology and psychology is
also based ultimately on a difference in the category of
cognition by means of which phenomena are viewed. But
the category of cognition for psychology is not the first
viewpoint alreadv mentioned. The subject-matter of psy-
chology is not the content of consciousness, but the form
1 S0z.. D. 9.
