PREFACE

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mental desire for unity and simplicity. Humanity has always
 been in search of the mystic simple formula which
would explain the whole universe, and that search will be
continued as long as man shall live. It springs from a fundamental
 motive operative in all of us, but it will never produce
 scientific knowledge. There is a beauty of form, an
aesthetic value, in a well-constructed metaphysical system
which no mere science can ever possess. There is something
esoteric about an interpretation of society in terms of a
single category as its essence and symbol. It has an emotional
 appeal with which no scientific analysis can compete.
 But, whatever the beauty and the value of these
products of the human mind, they do not give us a type of
knowledge on which an applied science can be built.
The same motives mentioned above have been the fundamental
 motives in the development of sociology. Sociology
 was born partly of a dissatisfaction with the fragmentary
 character of the knowledge obtained in the social
sciences, of a desire, that is, to see social life whole, and
partly of a desire to find a technique of social improvement.
But neither of these two needs can be satisfied by a science.
The first can only be satisfied by a social philosophy, the
second by an integration and co-ordination of the knowledge
 obtained in all the social sciences. When there also
arose a science of sociology, the confusion was complete.
The term came to be applied indiscriminately to three distinct
 types of knowledge: to social philosophy, to a specific
social science, and to a body of knowledge that purported
to be social engineering. Sociology was anything that had
to do with social life, from a social metaphysics to public
sanitation.
This confusion with regard to sociology is indicative
of the lack of a clear understanding of the fundamental
presuppositions and of the mutual relations of the social