CONCLUSION 
267 
understanding of the factual contents of social life requires 
two modes of approach. Only through the reciprocity or 
the alternation between the historical method and the 
method aiming at general timeless laws can we reach an 
understanding of the social actuality. The task of sociol- 
ogy has been described by him as the determination, the 
psychological explanation, and the tracing of the historical 
development of the forms of socialization. It is true that 
he bas given more attention to the first two than to the 
last, but there is usually a short treatment of historical 
development in his essays on social forms. This investiga- 
tion of the historical development, however, is for the dis- 
tinct purpose of reaching, in combination with the inquiry 
aiming at general timeless laws, a complete understanding 
of the actual sociological structure. If, therefore, the criti- 
cism of his neglect of the historical dimension implies that 
he has not conceived the investigation of the historical 
development as an end in itself, it contains a statement 
of fact. But, far from considering this fact a weakness, it 
would seem to us rather a valuable contribution, if only 
as a reaction against the one-sided emphasis on historical 
development in the social sciences in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 
During this period the social sciences, and especially 
sociology, have suffered from an overemphasis on the his- 
torical dimension. They were so much imbued with the 
spirit of social philosophy and the philosophy of history 
that Barth could consider sociology and the philosophy of 
history as identical. The historical investigation as an 
end in itself has a value and significance only as history. 
From the point of view of science, it has a value only as a 
means, not as an end. It is useful only in so far as it per- 
mits the discovery of the general timeless correlation which 
is the aim of science.