THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF 
HUMAN SOCIETY THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF 
HUMAN SOCIETY 
BY 
FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, Ph.D., LL.D. 
Professor of Sociology and the History of Civilization 
in Columbia University; Fellow of the Ameri- 
can Statistical Association; Member of the 
National Institute of Arts and Letters 
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 
LONDON! HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1924 Copyright, 1924, by 
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 
COMPOSED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY 
QIljc (Collegiate 
GEORGE BANTA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
MENASHA, WISCONSIN PREFACE 
My purpose in this book has been to indicate 
wherein and to what extent Sociology is in- 
dubitably a scientific study of Human Society, 
and how it can be made more rigorously so. 
To this end I have undertaken to describe 
strict methods that sociology can avail itself of, 
and to point out precautions and limits which 
must be observed in the use of each. 
While the book is not a treatise on sociology 
and makes no claim to be, it necessarily formu- 
lates the fundamental sociological problems, 
and sets forth the more important sociological 
generalizations that admit of verification. 
Use of the book as a text should be preceded 
by a short introductory course, concrete and 
elementary; but I hope that it will meet the 
need for a rounding out and clinching work. 
Indeed, to be quite frank, I think that it ought 
to be used for that purpose until it is superseded 
by a better book in its field. At present it is 
the only work of its kind. I do not believe that 
a student has mastered the essentials of soci- 
ology, not to mention wealth of detail, until he 
has become acquainted with the subject matter 
to which these pages are devoted, whether he vi 
Preface 
obtains the knowledge from these pages them- 
selves or from other sources. 
Various chapters have appeared from time 
to time in the "Journal of Social Forces, and 
portions of Chapter XII were printed some 
years ago in the Publications of the American 
Statistical Association. I am under many 
obligations to them, and above all to Dr. 
Howard W. Odum, Editor of the Journal, 
which I gratefully acknowledge. 
To my departmental colleagues, Tenney, 
Lindsay, Chaddock, Ogburn, Shenton and 
Ross, I desire to express my grateful apprecia- 
tion of valued suggestions and assistance. 
F. H. G. 
New York, Oct. i, 1924. CONTENTS 
Societal Patterns i 
Societal Variables 23 
The Scientific Scrutiny of Societal 
Facts 37 
The Classification of Societal 
Facts 59 
The Pluralistic Field and the 
Sample 80 
The Study of Cases 91 
The Significance of Casual Groups .... 104 
Societal Telesis 140 
The Validity of Inference from 
Societal Experimentation 172 
Exploration and Survey 182 
The Measurement of Societal 
Energies and Trends 189 
Methods of Measurement 208 
Bibliography 241 
Index 245 THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF 
HUMAN SOCIETY CHAPTER I 
SOCIETAL PATTERNS 
William James’s description of the world 
upon which a baby looks forth as a big and 
buzzing confusion has been quoted many 
times and will be quoted many times again. 
It is one of the best descriptions of anything 
ever written. 
There are minds that remain infantile 
throughout life; they never discover order or 
meaning in their surroundings. There are 
minds that outgrow infancy more or less; to 
them parts of the world, here and there, be- 
come orderly in a simple, familiar way; and 
these familiar parts of their environment no 
longer bewilder them. Then there are minds 
that almost grow up. To them a great deal of 
the world becomes a scheme of things, which 
they think they understand ; and many of them 
become so pleased with themselves and with 
what they have learned that they get into a 
way of believing that they know a great deal 
more than they really do. One part of the 
world in particular they find so comprehensible 
1 2 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
that they want to take it to pieces and put it 
together again, with improvements. They 
entertain no doubt of their ability to make a 
good job of the undertaking. This part of the 
world, so provocative to tinkers (in particular 
to tinkers whose vocation is law making) is 
Human Society. 
A relatively few minds find the world in- 
telligible if and when they put forth effort to 
acquire knowledge of it; and among these a 
small number have enough curiosity and dog- 
gedness to make the effort painstakingly. They 
observe and compare, they count and measure, 
they experiment and “check up.” These are 
the scientific minds. In the course of time they 
come to know more about the world than any- 
body else does, and they discover more ways 
of making it a comfortable place for men to 
live in than other folk have discovered. But 
oddly enough, the more they learn, the less 
impatient they seem to be to make everything 
over by direct action. In particular they be- 
come doubtful of the wisdom of drastic experi- 
menting upon human society. They want 
first to see and be sure what else is likely to 
happen when an existing balance of interests 
or forces is upset. 
The first bit of order which the infant mind 
perceives in the blooming and buzzing con- Societal Patterns 
3 
fusion of its world, is a vague pattern. A 
contact, or pressure, or something warm, or 
loud, or bright, or pungent, is “this” way or 
it is “that” way; it happens “before” or it 
happens “after.” Presently the mind perceives 
that some of these “somethings” recur in the 
same place or sequence. The warmth and the 
contact are always that way; the loud sound 
and the brightness are always this way; or 
perhaps it is the other way around, or the com- 
binations are different. The warmth happens 
first and the pressure follows; the sound hap- 
pens first and the brightness follows; or per- 
haps again, the order is not just this but there 
is an order. Always there is an arrangement of 
“somethings” in direction or in sequence, in 
space or in time, or in both, for an instant, or 
for a while; and any such arrangement of 
“somethings” is a pattern. Or, to put our cart 
before the horse, and so make a definition, a 
pattern is any arrangement of “somethings” 
in space or in time, or in both, for an instant 
or for a while. 
With uncanny rapidity a young mind, if nor- 
mally capable, discovers intricacies in its world 
pattern, one after another. It discovers grada- 
tions of pressure and of temperature, of light 
and shade, of pitch and of colour; it discovers 
near and far. Then it discovers similarities, 4 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
segregations and associations, divisibilities and 
factors, components and compositions, num- 
bers and ratios. At length, after all this dis- 
cernment, it discovers variables and variability, 
transformations, and progressions. 
As soon as the nature of a pattern is per- 
ceived it is easy to see, further, that patterns 
are of three fundamental types. First, or some- 
times to our apprehension, second (and not 
objectively one or the other) there is a form 
pattern, in which space positions are more con- 
spicuous than time sequences, and quiescence 
is more conspicuous than motion, although 
time is always discoverable in space, and mo- 
tion in quiescence, if we look for them. The 
form pattern is the graphic or the structural, 
it is the morphological pattern of things. The 
tracing from which a garment is cut, and the 
“cut” itself, the mould into which a casting is 
run, and the shape of the casting, a working 
drawing, a map, the topography of a region, 
the structure of a plant, the anatomy of an 
animal, all these are form patterns. 
Second, or sometimes to our apprehension, 
first, there is an action pattern in which time 
sequence and change are more conspicuous 
than space position and quiescence, although 
these are present. The action pattern is the Societal Patterns 
5 
dynamic, the physiological or functional, the 
behaviouristic pattern of things. The circling 
of negative electrons about their positive 
nucleus in the atom, of planets about their sun, 
the swirling motion of atornadic storm or of a 
whirlpool, the turning of the leaves of plants 
toward light, are action patterns. The pre- 
dictable performance of a kitten a few seconds 
old when placed on its back, is a complicated 
action pattern of the instinctive order. The 
kitten turns its head to one side, and then, 
with a screw-like motion, its shoulders; 
next it doubles in one paw and extends 
another; and finally, still twisting its spine, it 
turns its body until it rests on its belly. 
This sequence it repeats as often as it is 
placed on its back.1 
Third to our apprehension (and this time 
there is no alternative order, we are not able to 
perceive it until we have discovered form and 
action patterns) there is a factoral pattern. 
Certain factors are combined in specific ways 
or ratios to constitute given products, and fac- 
tors are of three kinds, component-constituent, 
dynamic, and conditional. 
Every something is a lot of somethings. A 
population, a herd, or a swarm is a lot of in- 
dividuals, human or animal. The human or 
1 Experiments of Professor Frederick Tilney. 6 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
animal organism is a combination of organs, 
these of tissues, these of cells, these of proto- 
plasmic bodies, and these of molecules. In- 
organic masses, too, are composed of molecules. 
Molecules are composed of atoms; and atoms of 
electrons. Composite somethings are also com- 
plex; that is to say, they are made up not only 
of components of like kind, but also of con- 
stituents of unlike kind. H2o is the constituent- 
component factoral pattern of water. Carbon, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, sul- 
phur, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, 
iron and chlorine, and occasionally other ele- 
ments in combination are the constituent- 
component factors of protoplasm. 
Factors that are difficult to imagine and so 
to know pictorially, but which we can know 
conceptually, and which are present in every 
pattern, are the dynamic ones. They are the 
factors of motion, change, doing. These are 
variously known as “energies” or “energy,” 
“forces” or “force.” All are modes of motion. 
Motions may be turbulent as in the wild dash- 
ing about of molecules which we know as heat, 
or coordinate, in which a body (theoretically 
a particle) moves consistently along a definite 
path, rectilinear or curving, so exactly that at 
any point its position with reference to an axis 
of abscissa and an axis of ordinates satisfies the Societal Patterns 
7 
terms of an equation. The word “force” is 
correctly used only when employed to designate 
coordinate motion. To all other dynamic mani- 
festations the more general word “energy” ap- 
plies. Force, in other words, is only one form 
of energy.2 
Factors of a third kind, entering into all 
patterns, are known as “conditions.” They are 
of three categories, namely, place, time and 
circumstance. 
The circumstance that we normally appre- 
hend the fundamental aspects or types of 
pattern in a certain order (and factoral pat- 
terns always last) determines a certain normal 
order of procedure when we set about the sys- 
tematic study of our world. 
Our aim is to arrive at explanation and so at 
understanding, and, as a rule, we do not arrive 
at explanation by just dropping down on it. 
Usually we climb, and we require something to 
climb on, namely, accurate descriptions of form 
patterns, along with much history of them, ac- 
curate histories of action patterns, along with 
trustworthy description of them, and a good 
deal of factorizing, which consists in resolving 
a phenomenon into components or elements of 
place, time, circumstance, quality, magnitude, 
’The reasons for this discrimination need not be stated here. They take 
us into the realm of the conservation of energy and the theory of quanta. 8 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
activity, behaviour or function, co-existence 
and sequence. 
In the study of Human Society above all it 
is necessary to begin with a serviceable knowl- 
edge, descriptive and analytical, of form and 
action patterns, present and past. Until we 
have obtained it we can make no headway in 
attempts to arrive at an understanding of pro- 
cesses. An explanatory sociology is our final, 
not our initial, achievement. 
It is, however, our chief concern in this book, 
and what I say here about patterns is an out- 
line tracing only. 
The societal form pattern is structural, by 
composition and by constitution. It is made 
up of human units, more or less alike, more or 
less different, combined in small groups, which, 
in turn, are combined in relatively large groups. 
To the possibilities of yet further combination, 
into great and ever greater groupings, there are 
no assignable limits. 
A strictly new or original societal group is 
normally, and perhaps, if we look closely enough 
always a casual, that is to say, an accidental 
or otherwise fortuitous group. Its human units 
find themselves arriving in one place by luck of 
alluring occasion or opportunity, or because of Societal Patterns 
9 
misfortune or disaster which has driven them 
from homes or haunts elsewhere. 
A young man and a young woman attractive 
to each other meet casually at a neighbour’s, a 
house-party, or a dance, fall in love and marry. 
A family and a household group result, and 
perhaps a kinship group which lives on through 
many generations. 
Three or four young men meet by chance 
and are drawn to each other. They become 
companions. After a while it may happen that 
other men are taken into the comradeship, and 
they become a fraternity; or, discovering that 
they have a common interest, they found an 
association, or sodality, so named from the 
Latin a mate. 
A multitude of individuals attracted by a 
spectacle, a speaker, or perhaps nothing more 
substantial than a rumour, assemble as a 
curious crowd; or, infuriated by a crime or 
other intolerable wrong, or perhaps only by 
instigation or obsession, they converge in the 
sinister solidarity of a mob. 
From far and near home seekers and ad- 
venturers invade a region only now made ac- 
cessible or in which tempting resources have 
only now been discovered. Many remain, 
others come, and together they become a com- 
munity. 10 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
More often than not casual groups have little 
cohesion and soon break up. Acquaintance 
groups, crowds, mobs and conventions fall 
within this category. Other groups, casual 
at first, develop cohesion and become self- 
continuing. In this category are families, 
households, kindreds, villages, larger commun- 
ities, and nations; also fraternities, religious 
sects, partnerships, trading companies, labour 
unions, corporations, and political parties. 
Among self-continuing groups the families, 
villages and larger communities include 
individuals of each sex. These groups are self- 
reproducing as well as otherwise self-continu- 
ing. They are genetic groups. The other self- 
continuing groups are only congregations: their 
members convene from time to time, and, as 
groups, they persist only by taking in new 
members from without. 
Genetic groups are the adequate component 
groups of comprehensive human society. They 
only can perpetuate it. The groups that are 
congregate and nothing more are in strictness 
only constituent groups. Their functions are 
specialized, and they bring about a division of 
labour. Therefore they are interdependent and 
therefore, further, they constitute or organize 
society, while merely genetic groups, with all 
their multiplying and cohering only compose it. Societal Patterns 
11 
The members of continuing societal groups, 
genetic or congregate, component or constit- 
uent, are of varying degrees of acquaintance 
and intimacy. Households, comradeships, and 
looser companionships, including play groups, 
are intimate groups; they are what Cooley has 
felicitously called “face to face” groups. Vil- 
lagers are acquaintances, but not all of them 
are intimates. In larger communities are found 
many individuals who are strangers to one 
another, and in nations there are aliens. 
In the scientific study of society the grada- 
tions of intimacy, down through mere ac- 
quaintance to non-acquaintance, have become 
the basis of a convenient division of labour. 
Social psychology occupies itself chiefly with 
the behaviouristic interactions of intimates, 
and the development thereby of the social at- 
titudes and habits of as the Latins called 
them. Societal psychology, or sociology, in 
distinction, while depending on social psy- 
chology at every step, occupies itself in the 
main with the genesis and the carrying on, 
and the characteristic achievements, of that 
comprehensive group which the Latins called 
societas. 
The action patterns of society are modes of 
behaviour in which, usually, many individuals 12 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
in one place or situation and at one time, 
participate. 
Whether an act (or chain of acts) constitut- 
ing behaviour is performed by one individual 
only or by two or more or by many individuals 
at once is determined by the reach and scatter 
of stimulation, to which the behaviour is 
response. A hornet stings the baby. The reach 
of the stinging dart and the epidermal area 
directly affected are minute. The reaction is 
individual behaviour. Baby’s shrieks, how- 
ever, travel far, and scatter widely enough to 
reach the ears of mamma, grandma, nurse, 
housemaid and cook, and the behaviour then 
resulting is multi-individual or pluralistic. A 
hurdy-gurdy on the street, a parade, a circus, 
provoke multi-individual behaviour on a larger 
scale; a new oil field, or a new health or rec- 
reation region provoke it on a great scale, and 
a declaration of war on a national or imperial 
scale. 
The reactions of many individuals to one 
stimulus which reaches all of them may be alike 
or unlike. The more nearly alike the individuals 
themselves are the greater is the chance that in 
any given case their responses will be similar. 
Also, as these individuals are more or less alike 
their responses are equally or unequally 
prompt, equally or unequally persistent. Societal Patterns 
13 
Whether participated in by few or by many, 
multi-individual behaviour is usually com- 
plicated by the reactions of individuals to 
one another. The behaviour of each is a 
stimulus to others by way of suggestion or 
example, or other incitement, and each reacts 
by imitation, or otherwise, to stimuli received 
from others. So, complicated by interstimula- 
tion and response, multi-individual behaviour 
becomes co-individual. 
Often enough repeated to become habitual, 
the modes of co-individual behaviour become 
folk-ways and institutions. Concretely these 
are the characteristic action patterns of human 
society. 
Social psychology, taking the intimate group 
as its subject of major interest, as has been 
said, is especially interested in the genesis of 
co-individual behaviour, while societal psy- 
chology, or sociology, is especially concerned 
with its developments on the great scale, as 
in folk-ways and institutions, and their large- 
scale reactions upon human well-being. 
In the historical evolution of human society 
form and action patterns are at every stage and 
at every period united. They are, in fact, iden- 
tified. What is form in one aspect is action 
in another. We encounter first a succession 14 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
of form-action patterns which constitute sav- 
agery; then a succession of form-action patterns 
which constitute barbarism; and at length a 
succession of form-action patterns which con- 
stitute what we are pleased to call “civiliza- 
tion.” 
Human society, it is supposed, was preceded 
by that flocking and herding which we call 
“gregariousness.” Herd fellows are creatures 
of one kind, but do not know that they are, 
because they can’t talk, and such conscious- 
ness as they have attained has not become self- 
consciousness. Human beings can talk and are 
self-conscious and so can discover wherein they 
differ, to what extent they are alike. Knowl- 
edge of themselves as of one kind, or not, in 
respect of any feature, trait, interest or habit, 
as colour, temperament, curiosity, religion or 
thrift, is the “consciousness of kind.” Human 
society is marked off from animal gregarious- 
ness by talk and the consciousness of kind.3 
’ Readers who have been brought up on a metaphysical psychology are 
warned that “consciousness” as I use the word in this book, and as I contend 
it should always be used in scientific discussion, is a name for a physiological 
phenomenon and not for an ontological mystery. A physiological and be- 
haviourist psychology does not concede that consciousness as a subjective 
state affects anything or explains anything. But it conceives of consciousness 
as not more a subjective state of mind than it is a mechanistic state of things. 
Physiologically, consciousness is a highly integrated awakeness and attentiveness 
oj an organism which has become tense, “all set,” alert, and ready for busi- 
ness. Mechanistic consciousness is dynamic. It effects much and explains 
much. Societal Patterns 
15 
Ages ago the human pack became a denizen 
or shelter group, occupying rock shelters or 
caverns which it defended. Within the shelter 
group, as components of it, were families. By 
multiplication of descendants families became 
kindreds. Mating was usually between mem- 
bers of different kindreds. It was “exogamous.” 
Mating that was approved and sanctioned by 
the groups concerned constituted marriage. 
The family assumed various forms, pairing, 
polyandrian, polygamous, and tended to be- 
come monogamic. Children often, and perhaps 
for a long time usually, were described, named, 
and counted as of the kindred of the mother; 
so making the scheme of descent matrilineal, 
instead of patrilineal as it is in civilization. 
Kindreds that were intermingled and united 
by intermarriages were a kith. The normal 
human group, small at first (a petty horde, as 
it is now in surviving savagery) was a kin-and- 
kith group. The familiar phrase, “kin and 
kith,” is significant of a long human history. 
Within the kin-and-kith group there were 
men who habitually went together in adventure, 
in hunting or in fighting; they shared hardship, 
danger, and such food as they could get; they 
were messmates. Out of their comradeship 
developed brotherhoods, fraternities, so- 
dalities. 16 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Among brotherhoods were certain ones 
which selected new members from among men 
distinguished for knowledge, skill or wisdom. 
These became secret societies, cherishing“mys- 
teries.” Every art and craft, every cult of 
magic or “medicine,” every tradition, was once 
a “mystery.” Mysteries were the elements of 
culture, and as hordes multiplied and wandered 
their mystery or medicine men carried culture 
throughout wide regions, so creating the 
“culture areas” and the “culture patterns” 
which ethnology studies. 
Among mysteries the supremely important 
ones were those of mana, spirits, and ghosts: 
the substance of religion. Mana as conceived 
was a contagious, mysterious power or in- 
fluence to invigorate or weaken, heal or make 
ill, save or destroy, bless or curse. For a long 
time mana, good and bad, was identified with 
particular places and obj ects, and conspicuously 
with plants and animals that were thought to 
possess powers especially wonderful or impor- 
tant. Numerous human groups believed that 
by contact with a plant or animal whose mana 
was good they obtained thereby strength, se- 
curity and good luck. A benign species or 
variety was regarded as sacred; it must always 
be protected, and might be eaten only in crises 
or on particular occasions to get “power” or Societal Patterns 
17 
“salvation” from mysterious ill or pollution. 
The men and women themselves who obtained 
strength and immunity from the mana of a 
sacred plant or animal believed that they 
partook of its nature to such an extent that 
they became identified with it. In this sense 
they were born or re-born of it; in this sense 
they were descended from it, and they called 
themselves by its name. The species or object 
with which a human group became so identified 
was called a “totem” in one of the North 
American Indian tongues, and the word has 
now passed into ethnology as a generic term. 
Human groups identified with totems are 
known as “totem groups” or “totem kins.” 
For ages in the past, it is probable, and 
throughout many parts of the world today, 
the “totem kin” is the distinctive social 
organization. 
In ethnological writings the Scotch word 
“clan,” not altogether appropriate, has come 
into use as a name for any unilateral kindred, 
matrilineal or patrilineal, totemic or not. The 
Greek patrilineal kindred was called the y&os 
and the Roman patrilineal kindred was called 
the gens. The latter word is commonly used 
now as a name for any patrilineal kindred. 
The corresponding adjective, “gentile,” is used 
also as a noun. 18 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
The clan cherished traditions, enforced ex- 
ogamy, and redressed injuries suffered by its 
members at the hands of outsiders. In North 
American Indian clans there were (and are) 
councils in which both men and women par- 
ticipated, and elderly wise men called sachems 
to whom deference was paid. These features 
are found in many parts of the world. 
In Asia and in Europe, and perhaps else- 
where, nearly related gentiles who could trace 
and prove their lineage for four or five genera- 
tions often lived together as a joint family or 
as a hamlet, and held property of certain kinds 
in joint possession. This organization persists 
in India, and surviving examples of it are found 
in Russia and in Southeastern Europe. 
A kin-and-kith group large enough to 
people a village or a vicinage, and constituted 
of clans or not, was a tribe. Often it spoke a 
distinctive dialect and usually it had a simple 
organization for war, consisting of a council 
of braves and a chief or chieftains. Not in- 
frequently a tribe was (and is) dual, consisting 
of two similar divisions or moieties each con- 
stituted of clans. Matrilineal tribes have usu- 
ally been constituted of totemic kindreds and 
have lived by hunting and fishing supplemented 
by the rude agriculture that was possible be- 
fore the plow was invented. The line between Societal Patterns 
19 
savagery and barbarism is usually drawn 
at the attainment of a complex tribal organ- 
ization and the simple beginnings of agricul- 
ture. 
On the grass lands of Asia, Europe, and 
Africa cattle were domesticated, and tribes 
that lived by herding, often nomadic but not 
always, flourished as far east as Northwestern 
India and as far west as Ireland. Cattle steal- 
ing raids by tribe upon tribe brought about 
transforming changes in tribal organization. 
Daring and successful chieftains received 
from their tribes, by way of recognition and 
reward, a major allotment of the stolen cattle, 
and rights of pasturage on border or frontier 
land which they undertook to defend. They 
had to have helpers, cowboys and fighters. 
These were not forthcoming from their tribe 
fellows, but could be picked up among outlaws, 
and ruined men whose tribes had been broken 
up, and who sought protection. This the chief- 
tain who “took them on” gave them, and they, 
in return, gave allegiance and service. In this 
arrangement, made binding by an oath of al- 
legiance, were the primal elements of beneficium 
et commendatio and of the sacramentum fidelita- 
tis, in a word, of feudalism, and of the spoils 
system of later politics. Receiving shares of 
the yearly increase of the herd, many of these 20 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
fealty men grew rich and powerful, and, as 
“cow noblemen” (the Bo Aires of the Irish 
Brehon Laws) lorded it over impoverished 
tribesmen. 
When the plow made possible a productive 
agriculture and a relatively settled life, joint 
families, or other four or five generation groups, 
grew into village communities. In these there 
was often an alien element set apart as a 
hamlet distinct from the “residential area” of 
the land-owning kinsmen. In the ancient laws 
of Wales we find descriptions of the arrange- 
ment. The kinsmen and their village were the 
gwely. The aliens were alltuds or aillts. The 
aliens, like the fealty men of the cattle herding 
tribe, had been luckless men, or their forbears 
had been; they had sought protection and had 
been taken on by a land-owning kindred to 
work the fields on a crop-sharing basis. The 
kinsmen proprietors among themselves were 
unequal, in distinction, in power, and in 
wealth, although jointly holding their land. 
The protected dependents received equal 
shares of land, cut up into narrow strips, and 
were held to equality in all things. In such 
communities of dependents 
probably, we should look for the origins of the 
manorial populations of serfs or villein tenants 
of a later time. Societal Patterns 
21 
From the earliest times there have been 
sacred places, rich in mana, or the homes of 
ghosts or tribal gods. Companies of pilgrims 
have resorted to them for healing or power. 
Also there have been strong places, that could 
be fortified and defended, and invaded popula- 
tions have hastened to them. At sacred places 
and at strongholds there has been bartering; 
priests have taken up residence there; and 
garrisons have been established there; artisans 
have assembled there to practice their craft; 
skillful barterers have become merchants there; 
outlaws and adventurers have come, and if 
they could make themselves useful have been 
accepted. The places have become towns and 
the inhabitants townsmen. By the fiction of 
adoption, or naturalization, newcomers and 
aliens have been taken into ancient tribal 
organizations and have become citizens. The 
town has become a -polls or city-state. 
Related and neighbouring tribes, speaking 
dialects of a common language and defending 
themselves against common enemies, have fed- 
erated or otherwise have been consolidated by 
war. Their military chieftains, appealed to in 
crises by priests, tribal judges, and people, 
have become priests and judges of final author- 
ity, and so, uniting three supreme functions in 
one sacred office, have become kings. Develop- 22 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
ing then political organization, consolidated 
tribes have become nations, each occupying a 
country, and the people of each compatriots. 
The line between barbarism and civilization 
is usually drawn at the attainment of political 
organization by -polls or nation. 
Powerful and aggressive nations have con- 
quered and annexed; they have created em- 
pires, adequate to defend civilization and to 
give it room. CHAPTER II 
SOCIETAL VARIABLES 
Factorizing, supplementing description and 
history enlarges and deepens our knowledge, 
which, however, until one more element is in- 
jected remains only descriptive or historical 
knowledge, interesting and gratifying to in- 
tellectual curiosity, but often disappointing 
when we try to use it to arrive at effective 
knowledge. 
Therefore, to arrive at explanation it is nec- 
essary, further and finally, to inquire to what 
extent factors, one by one or in combination, 
are subject to change; where, when, how and 
how fast they change; and what happens to a 
thing (or other phenomenon) in its integrity 
when this, that, or the other change or combi- 
nation of changes occurs. If we are able to get 
this knowledge we have an effective tool to 
work with practically. We can then begin to 
foresee what will certainly or probably happen, 
and to make changes among factors which will 
lead on to other and perhaps great changes 
that we desire. 
23 24 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Changeable factors of natural phenomena 
are now known in all the sciences and in phil- 
osophy by the name “variables,” a word long 
used in mathematics. It has the advantage of 
being explicit and precise. How naturally the 
use of it in the physical sciences has grown 
out of the use of it in mathematics is illustrated 
by our conceptions of velocity and accelera- 
tion. Velocity, speed, swiftness, is the motion 
of a body through a given distance in a given 
time, and both are variables. Each is subject 
to lengthening or shortening. The sprinter 
may on one occasion make a dash of a hundred 
yards and on another of three hundred yards. 
On one occasion it may take him two, three, 
or five more seconds to cover his distance than 
it did on a previous occasion. The acceleration 
of a falling body, second by second, is constant 
if only gravitation is acting; but the speed at 
which the body is going when it hits the ground 
varies with the number of seconds that it has 
been falling. A constant is an unchanging ratio 
ofone variable quantity to another; for example, 
the unchanging ratio, of the circumference of 
a circle to its diameter. When we have dis- 
covered and made sure of a constant we have 
attained the supreme end of scientific study in 
one domain or part of a domain, and have 
equipped ourselves with perhaps the most Societal Variables 
25 
powerful tool that man can own and use. In 
electro-physics, chemistry, thermo-dynamics, 
and other inorganic sciences many constants 
have been found and verified. In the organic 
sciences the phenomena studied are so com- 
plicated that only approximations to constants 
have been obtained, and not many of them. 
The ratio of population to food, formulated by 
Dr. Raymond Pearl, is such an approximation. 
The Mendelian ratios of dominants and re- 
cessives to a total generation of hybrids, are 
rough approximations. It is probable that in 
psychology a number of useful approximations 
will be achieved. That we shall work out many 
very close approximations in the social sciences 
is doubtful. For a long time to come we shall 
hardly do more than discover such general 
relations as that of the approximately inverse 
ratio of a meeting of minds to an increasing 
heterogeneity of population, or as that of the 
increase of lawlessness with the multiplication 
of laws. 
What then is possible? We can discriminate 
and identify variables and discover ways to 
measure amounts and rates of variability. We 
can ascertain the conditions under which varia- 
tion occurs and (a closely related research, 
when not in fact the same one) we can ascertain 
how variables consort with one another; that 26 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
is to say, we can determine their concurrences, 
associations, and correlations. For the present 
our most serious work consists in obtaining 
correlations. These are by no means perfect 
substitutes for constants, but they are the next 
best thing. 
What are the variables of human society 
that are important enough or significant enough 
to make it worth our while to observe and 
measure them, and to watch their consortings? 
We must go rather far back. Behaviour of 
whatever kind or complexity, whether of one 
lone individual or of two or three associating 
individuals, or of a multitude of individuals 
carrying on as society, is a phase of organic 
activity, the activity of organized living mat- 
ter; and organic activity is a variable, con- 
sorting with another variable which we call 
environment. What we want to know about 
these variables in any case (whether we are 
able to learn more or not) is, how they affect 
and determine one another, and what shifting 
combinations they make. 
In order, however, to learn as much as this 
we find it necessary to resolve the compre- 
hensive variables, environment and organism, 
into their own major components, and these, 
we discover, are a considerable lot of great 
variables of far-reaching potency, each of which Societal Variables 
27 
is further resolvable into lesser variables, also 
resolvable; and so on indefinitely. Perhaps it 
is because of this multiplicity of factors, and 
the inequality of their magnitudes, that many 
of our biological and psychological generaliza- 
tions, and most of our historical and political 
generalizations, are interpretations of life in 
terms of one or two conspicuous variables only, 
and are therefore of little scientific, and of less 
practical value. Environment is construed as 
region, or climate, or flora, or fauna, or soil, 
whereas each of these factors and many an- 
other enters into the quality and destiny of 
every individual life. Organism is construed as 
heredity or as variability; and one or the other 
of these phenomena is “picked” by writers on 
human affairs to “play up” in their theorizings, 
whereas there is no organism that is not, 
throughout its existence, a phenomenon of in- 
herited and transmissible mutations, and a 
center of minor variations which play a part 
in its individual life but are not transmissible. 
Among environmental variables that affect 
all organisms are, bounty (including food, heat, 
and so on), and constraint (including dangers, 
adversities, hardships, and so on), which dis- 
ciplines adaptability and brings about natural 
selection through the death rate of the non-fit 
and non-adaptable. Among environmental 28 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
variables, in addition to these, is stimulation, 
a necessary factor in all organic activity, in- 
cluding the activity of cells, tissues and organs, 
and, above all, of that activity of every organ- 
ism as an integer, which we call its behaviour. 
Among yet other environmental variables in 
addition to bounty, constraint, and stimula- 
tion in its simpler modes, are variates and 
complexes of stimulation which enter into those 
modes and syntheses of pluralistic behaviour 
which constitute the gregariousness of animals 
and the societal activities of human beings. 
Chiefly important among these are dispersion 
or scatter of stimulation, interstimulation, ac- 
quaintance, and heritage or culture. 
Among organic variables, discoverable in all 
organisms, are, viability (resistance to destruc- 
tive influences, endurance,longevity), fertility, 
stability (anatomical and physical balance in 
the individual and breeding true to type by the 
race), variability, adaptability, and habit, a 
complex of adaptability and stability. Addi- 
tional organic variables, discoverable in human 
beings, are, consciousness, including its phases, 
of conscious reaction to habit, emotion, imagi- 
nation, and reflection. Yet other organic 
variables (products of the foregoing relatively 
simple ones) are reactions to interstimulation, 
similarities and dissimilarities of individuals to Societal Variables 
29 
one another, and an individual masterfulness 
here and there, all of which enter into gregari- 
ousness; and, finally, talk, a consciousness of 
kind, a concerted volition, and a collective 
masterfulness (of gang, bloc, class, or integral 
group), all of which enter into the phenomena 
of society. 
Certain pairs of variables are specific deter- 
miners of behaviour and its modes, and are 
therefore of particular significance for our 
studies of mind and of society. 
Stimulation (varying in kind, degree, and 
duration) and habit, are specific determiners of 
behaviour in general. 
Dispersion (or scatter) of stimulation and 
degree of similarity (or of unlikeness) of the 
individuals or the groups reached by dispersed 
stimulation and reacting to it, are specific de- 
terminers of pluralistic behaviour. 
Interstimulation among creatures of like 
kind, and reaction to it by them, are specific 
determiners of consorting, that is, of keeping 
together and going about, by kind. 
Acquaintance, talk, and the consciousness 
of kind are specific determiners of human as- 
sociation. 
In such and other combinations of these and 
other actually varying variables, in their fluc- 
tuations, correlations, syntheses and dis- 30 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
persions, are comprised all the phenomena of 
life which it is possible for man to know, in- 
cluding his own consciousness and purposes, 
his social relations, and his societal interests. 
The gradation of organic forms and the vary- 
ing range and complexity of organic activities 
serve as magnifying lenses through which we 
may observe how variations, consortings, dis- 
bandings, and re-consortings of environmental 
and organic variables produce their results. 
Single cell organisms multiply by bodily di- 
vision. They are incapable of more than an in- 
finitesimal mental life, and, like enough, in- 
capable even of that. Detached from one 
another, and each shifting for itself, they have 
too limited an experience and too little power 
of performance to learn much or to do much. 
The metazoa (many celled organisms) all of 
which are inheritors of a mutation which multi- 
plied cells and differentiated them without al- 
together physically detaching them from one 
another, and which have survived in environ- 
ments adequately bountiful and stimulating, 
are, by contrast, capable of much, and some 
of them (human beings) of indefinite, mental 
development. This capability, however, fell 
only to organisms which escaped that other 
mutation which multiplies and holds in phys- 
ical attachment the undifferentiated cells or Societal Variables 
31 
groups of cells that compose the sponges, the 
corals, and other zodphites, to which no range 
of experience and achievement is possible. 
Here, obviously, is a generalization of some 
importance. A grouping and organization of 
differentiated cells into a metazoon, but with a 
physical detachment of the metazoon as an in- 
teger, is necessary to the development of men- 
tality. 
Yet mentality does not develop greatly or 
amount to much unless the organism can learn, 
and go on learning, one new thing after an- 
other. Now learning may be advantageous or 
dangerous. It involves a reconditioning of re- 
flexes (a detachment of reaction from a familiar 
stimulus and a tieing up to a new one) and, 
presently, a reconditioning of the complexes 
and tendencies of reaction (“the prepotencies” 
of Allport’s clarifying analysis) which we call 
instincts, and, after a while, a building up of 
new habits. In this process bewilderment and 
uncertainty are inevitable, and fatal mistakes 
are possible. The metazoa that live individu- 
ally solitary, or almost solitary, lives, learn 
little. They develop little mentality. Ap- 
parently it is only the herding creatures (which 
mutually profit by individual discoveries of 
danger and reactions of fear, and sometimes 
join in collective defense or attack), and the 32 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
social creatures (human beings) that can safely 
react in new ways to any considerable extent. 
What then is herding? It is a habit of con- 
sorting by animals of like kind that are physi- 
cally detached, and could go apart if they would, 
but do not. It is a behaviour engendered by a 
play of common stimuli (a dispersed stimula- 
tion) upon creatures similar enough to react to 
it as a general thing in like ways, and by mutual 
stimulation (interstimulation) to which (be- 
cause again of their similarity) they are sensi- 
tive. In other words, gregariousness is a con- 
tinuing mental attachment, subsequent to and 
notwithstanding physical separateness. 
Here, then, is another generalization of im- 
portance. Considerable mental development is 
possible only to creatures physically but not 
mentally separated. 
Herd fellows are herdminded, following sug- 
gestion and example because they are a kind, 
but are not intelligent enough to know that 
they are a kind; a limitation which renders 
them incapable of discriminating among sug- 
gestions and examples by even so simple a 
means as preferring the suggestions and ex- 
amples proceeding from one bunch of their 
herd fellows to those proceeding from another 
bunch. Therefore, while they are physically 
free, they remain psychologically unfree. Societal Variables 
33 
And because they are not mentally free, but 
are herdminded (each creature feeling and 
doing what each of his fellows feels and does) 
the mental development of gregarious animals 
remains limited and inferior. Mental develop- 
ment becomes potentially indefinite only when 
the thought no less than the bodily activity of 
the individual is made free, although instinc- 
tive and emotional attachment, and attach- 
ment by habit to others, continues; and this 
happens only among human beings living in 
society. 
Human beings have acquired the power to 
think, to form conceptual ideas, to reflect, to 
put ideas together in trial and error combina- 
tions, which is to reason. With the power of 
thinking they have acquired the power to talk, 
and have developed conversation. They are 
able, therefore, to become acquainted. They 
can not only compare the behaviour of one 
with the behaviour of another, but also they 
can get at and compare one another’s ideas, 
tastes, sentiments and purposes. They can 
sort each other into kinds. In a general way 
they are of one kind, and know it. In lesser 
ways, they are of different kinds, and each 
knows his own kind. Each has a consciousness 
of kind, more or less keen, more or less dis- 
criminating, more or less wide. Therefore, they 34 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
not only consort but also associate, each choos- 
ing with some range of freedom his associates, 
his socii. Accordingly, acquaintance, talk, and 
the consciousness of kind are, as was said, the 
specific determiners of association, an essential 
factor in which is a certain measure of mental 
freedom, of power to detach oneself in thought 
(and to a less degree in habits) from a 
undifferentiated herdmindedness. 
The development of mental detachment 
and, therefore, the realization of the higher 
possibilities of mentality by the human race, 
has been incredibly slow. Nevertheless, when 
human society, as a thing different from the 
mere animal herd, and immeasurably higher, 
came into existence, human individuals, phys- 
ically free, were beginning also to be psycho- 
logically free. They had then begun to differ 
mentally one from another and from the mass, 
and thenceforth they differed more and more. 
They began to act, and have more and more 
acted, independently. They began to be free 
moral agents and responsible beings. Perhaps 
one day they will really become such. 
Advance has been from savagery (in which 
mental solidarity was presumably not much 
less than in the troops of hominidae from 
which mankind descended) to and into civiliza- 
tion, which was made possible by discovery, Societal Variables 
35 
knowledge and invention (together constitut- 
ing enlightenment) and by economic gain. In 
civilization, as we like to believe, individual 
freedom of thought has become, in a good 
measure, possible. The steps of the progress 
have been made out. Savagery is mitigated 
and tribal barbarism is attained through tribal 
integration and developments of mores. The 
higher barbarism of patronage and allegiance 
is attained through developments of personal 
masterfulness and domination. A first stage of 
civilization is attained through detachments 
and migrations of individuals and bands from 
the groups of their birth, and consequent inter- 
minglings of folks of diverse origins in growing 
populations that attract them. It is character- 
ized by developments of sovereignty, and by 
political consolidations; by militarism, regi- 
mentation, coercion and standardization. A 
second stage of civilization is made possible 
by rebellions, revolts, criticisms, and develop- 
ments of legality. It is characterized by de- 
velopments of constitutionality, and by poli- 
cies of liberalism. A third stage of civilization 
is being made possible by science. It will be 
characterized, if attained, by respect for the 
individualities of fellow beings; an attitude and 
a habit which will comprise regard and con- 
sideration for privacy, for self-determination, 36 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
for liberty of thought, speech and action, and 
for free moral agency and responsibility. 
So we arrive at a third generalization of 
some importance. The indefinite development 
of mentality is possible only to human beings 
who not only are physically detached and free 
(as metazoa in general are) but also are intel- 
lectually free and morally responsible, and who, 
therefore, differ with one another more or less, 
according to the constitution and working of 
individual minds; although instinctively and 
emotionally and to a great extent in habit they 
remain attached to one another (as all gregari- 
ous creatures do) in fundamental relationships 
of group living. 
If these three generalizations are true, they 
are damnatory against all programs of com- 
munism and communistic socialism. 
Such are the greater societal variables, and 
their products. To learn more about them (both 
the variables and their products) to know them 
more precisely, and, above all, more fully and 
exactly to know how they evolve their products, 
is the aim of a scientific study of society. CHAPTER III 
THE SCIENTIFIC SCRUTINY 
OF SOCIETAL FACTS 
For practical reasons even more than for 
merely intellectual ones, we need rigourously 
scientific studies of human society and of our 
individual relations to it. In particular we 
need such studies of the societal interests that 
are labeled “public policy,” “education,” “mis- 
sions” and “social work.” I am aware that this 
proposition is resented by men and women 
who suffer from an anti-“academic” complex 
and worry lest “the human touch,” “the ways 
of the neighbourhood” and the naive thinking 
of “plain people’’ shall have spontaneity 
squeezed out of them by theory. This is an 
unfortunate misapprehension of what science 
is and of what it does for us. It ought not to 
be necessary at this late day, but it is necessary, 
to tell the general public that science is nothing 
more nor less than getting at facts, and trying 
to understand them, and that what science 
does for us is nothing more nor less than help- 
ing us to face facts. Facing the facts that the 
37 38 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
physical and biological sciences have made 
known to us has enabled us to live more com- 
fortably and longer than men once did. Facing 
the facts that the social sciences are making 
known to us, and will make better known, 
should enable us to diminish human misery 
and to live more wisely than the human race 
has lived hitherto. In particular it should en- 
able us to take the kinks out of our imperfect 
codes of conduct. It will be discovered one day 
that the chief value of social science, far from 
being academic, is moral. 
Let me sharpen the point by illustrations. 
I have on my desk the latest report of an or- 
ganization which purports to ameliorate prison 
life and to reform convicts. Little exact in- 
formation is given. Instead, the pages are 
filled with autobiographical tales by “reformed” 
felons. These tell us that neglected childhood, 
evil communications, unemployment (for which 
the narrators were not to blame) or other hard 
luck, drove these unhappy persons into careers 
of crime which they would have followed to 
the end of their days if the beneficent organiza- 
tion had not discovered their inherent good- 
ness and obtained for them, by parole or other- 
wise, “another chance.” Conceivably one or 
two of the tales may be true, but no proof is 
offered that any of them is. If verification of Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
39 
any sort has been attempted there is no men- 
tion of the fact in this self-glorifying report. 
Therefore, in all human probability, the or- 
ganization has experimentally satisfied itself 
that there are enough rich morons in the world 
to sustain its merciful activities without asking 
embarrassing questions. 
An active worker in an organization of wide 
reach, which devotes itself to the religious and 
moral guardianship of young men, read a 
seminar paper on the “program” which the 
association attempts to carry out. It appeared 
that four great lines of work had been pro- 
jected and are being followed. Young men are 
being made physically “fit”; they are being 
intellectually “developed”; their religious life 
is being “deepened”; and they are being trained 
to be of “service.” I asked the reader to de- 
scribe the methods of checking up which the 
association employs to satisfy itself that these 
admirable objects are being attained. He was 
unable to enlighten us, and I therefore made 
my questions specific. Are the young men 
physically examined and rated from time to 
time by medical or other experts? No. Is 
their intellectual progress tested from time to 
time, as the progress of public school pupils is, 
or in any other way? No. Is the “depth” of 
religious life now and then sounded, or other- 40 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
wise measured? No. Are tangible evidences 
of “service” obtained and recorded? No. 
Another seminar paper, read on another oc- 
casion, set forth the well-advertised social 
work of an “influential” metropolitan church. 
A chief item was the relief and “oversight” of 
more than one hundred indigent families. The 
writer of the paper (an unfeeling wretch) had 
asked the almoner what procedure was fol- 
lowed to ascertain that the families were de- 
serving. Not satisfied with the answer received 
he had gone to the records of a charity organi- 
zation society and had learned that more than 
ninety per cent of the families in question were 
“notorious” cases of professional mendicancy, 
each of them “working” from two or three to 
eight to ten sources of income. 
My readers may object that these illustra- 
tions of irresponsible social work are not rep- 
resentative, presuming that they are discredit- 
able survivals of traditions and practices now 
passing. Up to date social work, they may 
insist, is both more intelligently and more 
responsibly conducted. 
I want to believe that it is, but then, is it, 
always or generally? Does anybody know that 
it usually is, or is everybody just saying that 
it is ? If anybody does know he is more wicked 
than the servant who hid his lord’s treasure in Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
41 
a napkin, if he keeps the information much 
longer to himself. Frankly, I doubt if the in- 
formation is obtainable. I have made more 
attempts to get it than I can count, and with- 
out success. One thing is certain. Our social 
workers and our uplift organizations do not 
know what results they are getting, and by 
what methods they are getting them, in the 
same rigourous sense in which a well-managed 
business corporation knows what it is getting 
out of its personnel, its machines, and its 
methods. 
This brings us back to my main contention, 
that the major value of a scientific study of 
society is moral. It is only by the methods of 
making sure (which constitute scientific study) 
that we ever can know what our public poli- 
cies, our educational procedures, our religious 
endeavours and our social work are accom- 
plishing. Therefore nothing but the scientific 
study of society can save us from the sin, the 
scandal and the humiliation of obtaining 
money under false pretenses, for the attain- 
ment of righteous ends which, like enough, we 
are not in fact attaining. 
The scientific study of any subject is a sub- 
stitution of businesslike ways of “making sure” 
about it for the lazy habit of “taking it for 42 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
granted” and the worse habit of making ir- 
responsible assertions about it. To make sure, 
it is necessary to have done with a careless 
“looking into it” and to undertake precise 
observations, many times repeated. It is neces- 
sary to make measurements and accountings, 
to substitute realistic thinking (an honest deal- 
ing with facts as they are) for wishful or fanci- 
ful or other self deceiving thinking and to carry 
on a systematic “checking up.” At every step 
we must make sure that the methods which we 
use and rely on have been accredited by ex- 
haustive criticism and trial, and are applicable 
to the investigation in hand. 
Inasmuch then, as science, as was said, “is 
nothing more nor less than getting at facts, 
and trying to understand them” the discovery 
of facts which prove to be facts is initial scientific 
activity. In the nature of things it continues 
more or less fortuitously, however systematic 
we try to make it. The scrutiny of alleged facts 
to determine whether or not they are facts, is 
the fundamental systematic work of science. 
We make acquaintance with a fact as an 
individual instance of something or other which 
arrests attention. A hundred other things, 
quite as obvious, quite as important, and pos- 
sibly more significant, we may not see at all. 
If we reflect for a moment on this circumstance Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
43 
we discover that the assortment of facts which 
we carry in our heads and build into the 
structure of knowledge must be smaller than 
the assortment which makes up the world of 
actuality, and differently arranged. So, right 
at the beginning of inquiry, we are warned to 
watch our steps. Relativity, it seems, is a 
factor in reality. 
The particular instance of something or 
other which has arrested our attention looks 
like a unit or item, detached or detachable, and 
so we think of it for the moment. Then we 
make further discoveries. Our instance is a 
unit as far as its relations with other instances 
like itself or different happen to go, but if we 
leave them out of our field of vision and forget 
them, and look intently at our particular in- 
stance we see it resolve into a multitude of 
lesser items, arranged perhaps in clusters or 
patterns, and, like enough, moving about. 
Each of these items in turn, we presently 
ascertain, is composite, and so on, without end. 
Human society abounds in examples and the 
social worker encounters them. He may be 
interested chiefly in a mill town, or chiefly in 
a neighbourhood, or chiefly in certain families. 
At one time he will be most concerned about 
what the mill town or the neighbourhood or a 
family does. At another time he will be most 44 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
concerned about what it is. As long as he is 
attending to what the mill town does he thinks 
of it as a whole. It is a community. He com- 
pares it with other communities as wholes. 
He observes similarities and differences of 
activity and achievement. These observations 
may lead him to ask why such similarities and 
differences exist, how they are to be accounted 
for. Trying to answer this question, he finds 
himself inquiring what his mill town is, and 
from that moment he is resolving it into com- 
ponents. He is discovering that it is made up 
of corporations, trade unions, churches, schools, 
shops and markets, professional men and busi- 
ness men, skilled mechanics and unskilled 
labourers, native born folk and foreign born 
folk of various nationalities; in fine, of inhab- 
itants arranged in bewildering clusters and 
patterns. If he is interested chiefly in a neigh- 
bourhood or in a family he has a like experi- 
ence. He thinks of it as a unit while he is 
learning what it does. He necessarily thinks of 
it as a composite when he tries to learn what 
it is. 
A particular instance, then, is a unit or not 
as we happen, or have occasion, to see it, and 
we have occasion to see it in the one or the 
other way according to the nature of the in- 
vestigation that we attempt to make. If it is Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
45 
our purpose to learn how our particular in- 
stance is related to other instances like itself, 
or behaves toward them or with them, or 
enters into combination with them to make up 
a bigger whole; or how it is related to things 
(that is to say instances) unlike itself, and be- 
haves toward them or with them, or enters 
into combination with them—our instance is 
a unit, and we deal with it as such. But if 
our purpose is to learn what it is, if we are 
attempting to account for it, and to under- 
stand it, our unit of investigation must ob- 
viously be an item of lower order. Practically 
it must be an item of the next lower order. 
In accounting for things we must go back step 
by step. 
Here it is important to understand that in 
so viewing the particular instance, and in so 
choosing a unit of investigation, we are not 
acting arbitrarily. In books on scientific 
method, and most often, perhaps, in books on 
statistical method, we encounter the statement 
that we do take our unit arbitrarily, or prag- 
matically. This is a shorthand expression, a 
talk saving device, and harmless enough if we 
do not take it too literally. Speaking strictly, 
our choice is determined by a logical necessity. 
We take the particular instance as a unit if we 
are investigating what it does. We do not take 46 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
it as a unit, but resolve it into units of the next 
lower order if we are investigating what it is. 
What is the practical value of all this for the 
social worker, or for the investigator? It is 
the same for both, and it lies in an admonition. 
Don’t mix up things that should be discrimin- 
ated, and don’t take your knowledge for some- 
thing that it is not. Do not deceive yourself 
with the notion that you can understand what 
your nation, or your town, or your neighbour- 
hood, or your family, does, or why it does it, 
until you have had the patience to learn what 
it is, or with the notion that you can learn 
what it is in any other way than by pains- 
takingly resolving it into component units and 
scrutinizing them. Short cuts to a knowledge 
of society and to proficiency in helping it 
through tribulations will yield you nothing, 
and get you nowhere. 
When we have determined whether the par- 
ticular instance of something or other which 
has arrested our attention, and in which we 
have become interested, shall be regarded for 
our further purposes as doing something, or as 
being or becoming something, and thereby 
have chosen our unit subject, it is good scien- 
tific practice to ascertain next, as accurately 
as may be necessary for our further purposes, 
its position in time and in space. To place a Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
47 
thing roughly in its time and space relations to 
other things is usually not difficult. To place it 
accurately is another matter. This operation 
takes patience, energy, time and money. Un- 
fortunately, in the study of societal variables 
these costs are often almost prohibitive. It is 
therefore highly important that the investiga- 
tor should bring good practical judgment to the 
task of deciding how precise he ought to be; in 
other words, how much precision is worth while. 
He is likely to find that this depends upon the 
shifting, that is to say, the variability, of the 
position which he is observing. If the variabil- 
ity is negligible—as it is, for example, in the 
case of a town as old as London or even as 
San Francisco; or as it is in the case of one of 
those French peasant families that have lived 
continuously on the same piece of land for 
more than five hundred years—the problem is 
relatively simple. But it is not at all simple in 
the case of one of those colonies of Italians or 
of Jews that are moving continuously from one 
end of one side of Manhattan Island to the 
other, or of a migrating church, or school, or 
shopping district. It is least of all simple in 
the case of a migrating wage-earning family, or 
dependent family, or criminal family. Yet it 
is precisely in these cases that an accurate 
determination of position in space and in 48 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
time is imperative for purposes of identifica- 
tion. 
Similar requirements of scientific scrutiny 
apply to our determination of other categorical 
matters, including the conditions attaching to 
persistence in one or another place or in one or 
another succession of events; the identifying 
marks and attributes of the thing, individual, 
or group in which we are interested; its form 
or changing forms; its magnitudes, or varying 
magnitudes, and its reactions, that is to say, 
its behaviour. Here should be noted certain 
important differences between the task of the 
physicist or of the biologist, on the one hand, 
and that of the sociologist, on the other. Form 
and magnitude are, in general, of more imme- 
diate and continuing concern to the physicist 
and the biologist than they are to the sociologist, 
although they never can be neglected by the 
latter. Again, the forms which the physical 
and biological sciences have to do with are 
relatively definite and constant patterns, while 
those that sociology has to do with are some- 
what less definite and more variable patterns. 
Magnitudes also offer striking contrasts. The 
magnitudes with which physics and chemistry 
have to do are inconceivably minute, and can 
be measured only with instruments of the ut- 
most precision. Those with which astronomy Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
49 
has to do are inconceivably vast, but their 
calculation is made possible by means of the 
fine measurements of physics. The magnitudes 
with which sociology has to do lie within the 
ranges of every day observation, and they are 
measured by commonplace counting, and by 
subsequent statistical operations. Accurate 
counting, however, is not always as easy as it 
looks, and costly investigations are too often 
invalidated by untrustworthy enumerations. 
And statistical methods are fine-edged tools. 
The sociologist and the social worker should 
acquire expertness in counting, under varying 
circumstances, including the coming and going 
of not too large crowds, and they must get a 
sound, if not necessarily extensive, knowledge 
of statistics. 
When it comes to the scrutiny of qualities 
and reactions, as much painstaking and preci- 
sion are necessary in sociology as in the phys- 
ical sciences or in biology. Carelessness and 
error are fatal. It is above all important to 
discriminate between those relatively unvary- 
ing ways in which things, individuals and 
groups impinge upon our consciousness,—and 
which we call their traits, properties, charac- 
ters or characteristics, or, collectively, their 
qualities—and those relatively variable ways 
of impinging which we call their changes, 50 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
activities, reactions, or behaviour. Among 
qualities it is necessary to discriminate be- 
tween those which are usually, but not always, 
associated with their subjects, and those which, 
always inseparable from them, we call their 
attributes. In human beings inherited qualities 
only are attributes. 
The behaviour in which the social psycholo- 
gist is interested is the reaction of an individual 
or of an intimate group to a fellow individual 
or to another intimate group. It may take 
the form of indifference or of interest; of fear 
or of trust; of liking or of disliking; of anger or 
of sympathy; of envy, jealousy, malice or hate, 
or of rejoicing in another’s good fortune; of 
respect, reverence or affection. It may be 
aloofness or cooperation. The social worker is 
every moment dealing with social or unsocial 
behaviour. He should thoroughly know his 
social psychology. 
The behaviour in which the sociologist is in- 
terested, as was shown in our first chapter, is 
the approximately simultaneous reaction of a 
considerable number of individuals that hap- 
pen to be in the same situation or circumstance. 
Their reactions may be alike or different; 
equally or unequally alert and persistent. This 
behaviour we called multi-individual or plural- 
istic. It develops into group ways, class ways, Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
51 
and folk ways, and into organization. The 
social worker is at all times in contact with it 
and dealing with it. He should thoroughly 
know his sociology. 
Pluralistic behaviour can be seen or heard, 
or both seen and heard, and no further ac- 
quaintance with it is necessary to satisfy us of 
its occurrence, but to check up our knowledge 
of a particular instance of occurrence, so that 
it shall be reasonably complete and accurate, 
it is necessary to do more or less counting. 
Only by counting can we know how much more 
effective in provoking pluralistic reaction a 
given stimulus is at one time than at another, 
or in one place than in another. Counting for 
this purpose has become an important factor 
in determining the relative attractiveness of 
residential areas, of occupations, recreations, 
styles, and a hundred other interests of every 
day life. Business and professional men make 
or lose money by their attention or indifference 
to it. To determine the relative efficacy of 
alternative stimuli in calling forth pluralistic 
response, for example in shop work, or in school 
work, the counting must be accurate. So, also, 
it must be to determine alertness and persist- 
ence of response to varying stimuli. By no 
other means can we certainly know, for ex- 
ample, whether the percentage of workers at 52 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
their places within three minutes after the 
whistle blows in the morning is equal to the 
percentage outside the door within three min- 
utes after it blows at noon, or the effect upon 
these ratios of such devices as fines and bonuses. 
Persisting reaction and its extent can be as- 
certained in no other way than by counting, 
which is always resorted to for measuring the 
effectiveness of religious and of political activ- 
ity, but too often stops short of satisfying 
completeness. I have before me an account of 
the revival meetings which Dwight L. Moody 
conducted in one of the larger American cities. 
It says: “A careful computation puts the total 
attendance at 900,000 and the converts at 
4,000.” We are not told how many of the 4,000 
converts (they were less than three tenths of 
one per cent of the attendance) continued to 
live a “sober, righteous, and godly life.” 
The consciousness of kind is obvious enough 
as a state of mind which continually obtrudes 
itself into our relations with other persons, but 
our notion of it may be vague. A simple 
counting of a few items will clarify and define. 
Write down the names of twenty-five ac- 
quaintances of your own sex and colour race 
whom you like and associate with, and twenty- 
five names of persons who annoy you so that 
you dislike them and, whenever possible, avoid Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
53 
them. Go over each list and note in which one 
you find more persons who are like yourself in 
colouring (blondness or brunetness); in which 
one you find more who are like yourself in 
being conventional or unconventional in dress 
and in manners; in which one you find more 
whose notions about right and wrong are like 
your own; in which one you find more whose 
tastes and interests are yours. Now get a 
considerable number of careful persons to make 
similar lists and comparisons. The more lists 
you can get the better, but fifty is a good 
number. Assemble the results, and you will 
make interesting discoveries. Similarity or 
contrast of colouring within the same colour 
race is a negligible factor in your likings and 
dislikings. You may have been told or taught 
otherwise. Similar or dissimilar notions of 
right and wrong have a good deal of influence, 
but the big factors are similarities or dis- 
similarities of manners, tastes and interests.1 
We observe concerted volition of a spon- 
taneous, or at least unorganized, kind when- 
ever we see a mob bent on mischief, or watch 
the proceedings of a public meeting which 
adopts resolutions, or participates in a refer- 
endum election. These casual observations, 
however, tell us only that people actually do 
1 For detail of this experiment vide Chapter VII. 54 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
these things. By counting certain combina- 
tions of items we make further discoveries. 
For example, not everybody participates who 
might; the number of qualified voters answering 
to a roll call varies from question to question, 
from resolution to resolution, and you do not 
have to make an impossible number of count- 
ings to learn that the constant factor affecting 
the number of votes is the degree of mental 
equipment2 required, not to understand the 
question, but to be interested in it. It will not 
be long before the data made available in states 
which have referendum voting on questions 
will afford a convincing confirmation of other 
hotly discussed results of mentality tests. 
Pluralistic behaviour, complicated by the 
consciousness of kind, and becoming concerted 
volition, is over and over repeated. Through 
repetition it acquires form or mode. It is sub- 
ject to fault-finding and disapproval. Forms 
or modes that are usually approved survive. 
They become conventions or customs, that is 
to say, group ways, class ways and folk ways. 
That each of these is followed more or less, 
and disregarded more or less, is familiar knowl- 
21 use here the term “mental equipment” instead of “intelligence” be- 
cause as yet we are unable to test intelligence unmixed with habit, knowledge, 
and familiarity, irrespective of native intelligence. Mental equipment in- 
cludes the factor intelligence, the factors familiarity and practice, and the 
factor knowledge. Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
55 
edge; but in order to know which ones are most 
followed and which ones most disregarded, in 
particular to know to what extent each one 
is followed and each one disregarded, it is 
necessary to do a good deal of counting. This 
proposition will not be disputed, and I need 
not say more about it now. 
The particular instance of something or 
other in which one is interested may be amen- 
able to experimental control, which is the best 
of all the ways of scientific scrutiny, or it may 
not be. It has generally been held that the 
phenomena of human society are too compli- 
cated for a strictly scientific experimental in- 
vestigation. It is true, of course, that we are all 
the time' making social and societal experi- 
ments. In no other field do we make so many, 
but these are not usually of the scientific sort. 
In scientific experimentation we control every- 
thing that happens. We determine when it 
shall occur and where. We arrange circum- 
stances and surroundings; atmospheres and 
temperatures; possible ways of getting in and 
possible ways of getting cut. We take out 
something that has been in, or put in some- 
thing that has been out, and see what happens. 
At every step we describe what we do and the 
things that we deal with, with accurate speci- 
fications. We count, measure and weigh, and 56 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
make records. To manage all this in societal 
experimentation cannot be easy. Is it at all 
possible? 
Among unnecessary ways of being mistaken 
none is more unnecessary or more discredited 
by experience than to assume that something 
or other can not be done. 
As far as I know there is no record of a strictly 
scientific societal experiment completely 
carried through on a large scale, but there have 
been many tentative and partial experiments 
(experiments in experimenting, if one may call 
them that) and they are multiplying. The 
more promising ones have been and are being 
made in workshops and in schools and by a 
few intelligently managed corporations, in- 
dustrial or philanthropic. The more disap- 
pointing, although often sincerely attempted 
ones, have been made by neighbourhood houses 
and by churches. The cause of failure, in many 
instances, has been a commendable aversion to 
anything that has looked like prying into pri- 
vate affairs and keeping tab on them. This 
aversion I share and unqualifiedly approve; 
but in the environment of every settlement 
and of every church there are opportunities 
for social and societal experimentation that 
would not require intrusiveness or meddling. Scientific Scrutiny of Societal Facts 
57 
That these have not been more successfully 
exploited must be explained, I am afraid, by 
aversion to the tedium of counting and record- 
ing, to note books and statistics. 
Among small but insignificant societal ex- 
periments which, without question, could be 
conducted in a strictly scientific manner and 
carried through to indisputable results, are a 
few rigourous and crucial ones to determine 
what are the best ways and means of awaken- 
ing group, class, or neighbourhood interest, 
and of holding it. Settlements and churches 
are continually trying out these ways and 
means, practical ones and fantastic ones, sane 
ones and crazy ones, but their results are as- 
tonishingly meagre. Their reports, with com- 
mendable exceptions, are a flotsam of unverified 
assertions, uncritical impressions, and opti- 
mistic forecasts, made, not to establish a fact, 
but to wheedle money for more loose work of 
the same kind. It is possible to do this work 
in a scientific and convincing way, and it 
ought to be so done. A good many schools and 
a good many employers of wage-earners are 
making carefully conducted experiments in the 
formation of group and class habits. The re- 
sults are of great and increasing value. Year 
by year they are being checked up and ex- 58 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
tended. Big corporations managed by men of 
vision are making experiments in organization. 
These, too, are of increasing value. 
The final verification of an alleged fact (its 
conclusive establishment as a fact) is attained 
only through much repeating of observations 
and measurements. Not until we can safely 
challenge anybody to go over our work and 
discover errors in it can we be quite sure that 
we know anything. As I have heretofore in- 
sisted3 a fact in the scientific sense of the word 
“is the close agreement of many observations 
or measurements of the same phenomenon.” 
Error creeps into observation in unaccountable 
ways, and different observers make different 
mistakes. Precise measurement by one person 
at one time and in one place is next to impos- 
sible. The nearest approximation to accuracy 
is made by taking the average of many meas- 
urements made by many measurers and cal- 
culating its probable error. Physicists and 
chemists, astronomers and geologists, biologists 
and psychologists, are tirelessly repeating their 
observations and their measurements of pre- 
sumptive fact. Social psychologists and so- 
ciologists must get this habit. 
8 Inductive Sociology, p. 13, and Studies in the Theory of Human Society, 
p. 131. CHAPTER IV 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIETAL FACTS 
There is a way of sorting facts to suit our- 
selves which is sometimes, but not always, 
legitimate. We often call it “classification,” 
but it has little resemblance to classification in 
the scientific meaning of the word. It proceeds 
on an assumption that: 
The particular point of view, or the particular character- 
istic that is pitched upon as definitive in the classification of 
the facts of life, depends upon the interest from which a 
discrimination of the facts is sought.1 
Intent upon interest, it picks facts and 
pigeon-holes them regardless of any quality or 
behaviour which they have or exhibit as a trait 
in common, and solely with reference to the 
way, often adventitious, in which they affect 
somebody or some thing not one oj themselves: 
something or somebody extrinsic to themselves. 
This kind of classification may be called prag- 
matic. 
Scientific classification, by contrast, is de- 
scriptive. It picks and sorts facts with refer- 
1 Veblen, The Theory oj the Leisure Class, p. 9. 
59 60 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
ence to traits inherent in themselves or char- 
acteristic of themselves, which they possess in 
common, one with another, among themselves: 
common intrinsic traits. Each class or cate- 
gory is created by dividing an aggregate of 
items into two parts (dichotomy); one (the 
designated class or category) comprising all 
items that exhibit a certain designated trait, 
the other, a remainder, (which may constitute 
another class or other classes) comprising all 
items that do not exhibit that particular trait. 
The purpose of pragmatic classification is 
utilitarian: it may or may not have intellectual 
value. Too often it is employed not to get at 
truth, but to prove a case. The purpose of de- 
scriptive classification is to extend and clarify 
knowledge. 
I cannot better expand definition of the 
nature and purpose of scientific classification 
than by quoting a few lines written many years 
ago. 
If we were unaware of differences, we should not know. If 
our eyes were not sensitive to differences of brightness and 
of colour, if our ears were deaf to gradations of sound, and if 
the nerves of the skin detected no inequalities of pressure, the 
external world would remain, for our minds, a blank. Dis- 
crimination, then, is the beginning of knowledge. Neverthe- 
less, it is only a beginning. 
If we knew nothing but the differences of things, we should 
soon reach the limit of the detail that our minds could hold. 
Endless progress in knowledge is possible only because we Classification of Societal Facts 
61 
observe resemblances as well as differences. As rapidly as we 
discover that things are alike, we put them together in our 
thought as a group, or class, or kind. This enables us to think 
about them collectively by a single effort of attention, instead 
of separately by innumerable efforts. We owe all science to 
this possibility of economizing our mental energies, by group- 
ing things in our thoughts into classes or kinds. 
Comparatively few persons make their mental groupings 
in a strictly methodical way. To observe systematically and 
classify with precision—that is, to group like things together 
with accuracy—is to be scientific. 
Classification, then, is the foundation of all scientific knowl- 
edge; and classification consists simply in putting together in 
our thought those things that are truly and essentially alike.2 
What, then, do we mean by “resemblance,” 
by true and essential similarity? 
When we attempt to answer this question 
we discover that we can define resemblance 
only in terms of difference! Obviously, if a fact 
differs from an alleged other fact in no particu- 
lar whatsoever, or however slight, the two are 
identical; there is only one fact. If however, 
they differ ever so little there are two identities, 
and if the difference is minute we say that they 
are similar. If the difference is considerable 
we say that the two facts are “somewhat” 
alike. If the difference is great we say that 
the two facts are different, that they are not 
alike. What, then, we ask again, is a resem- 
blance? and now we answer: It is a difference 
2 Giddings, Elements of Sociology, pp. i and 2. 62 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
less than a limiting difference, which it may or 
may not be worth while to determine with 
precision. 
How could it be determined with precision 
if we should think that worth while? To this 
question the answer is: By taking advantage 
of one outstanding and amazing fact, namely, 
that everything in the universe, whether it be 
a thing, a thought, or a person, can be resolved 
into components, and these into lesser com- 
ponents, ad infinitum. A lump of matter is 
composed of molecules; a molecule is composed 
of atoms; an atom is composed of electrons. 
What an electron is composed of no man yet 
knows, but that it is composite probably no 
scientific man seriously doubts. Accordingly, 
resemblance, like everything else, must be 
conceived as composite. Its components may 
conveniently be called “points of resemblance,” 
and resemblance is small or great according as 
it comprises few or many points of resemblance. 
In the nomenclature of logic any trait or 
characteristic of quality, magnitude, or be- 
haviour which is inseparable from a thing or 
a thought is called an attribute, and any at- 
tribute may be a point of resemblance. There- 
fore, two or more things or individuals are 
more or less alike according as they have many 
or few attributes in common. Classification of Societal Facts 
63 
And this is not quite the end of the matter. 
An attribute is composite, it can be resolved, 
or analyzed, and a great many attributes are 
hybrids. A crude logic used to say that a 
thing is or is not this or that; it is a or it is 
not a. A more refined logic has discovered that 
it may be both a and not a. Is a boy truthful 
or not truthful? With the exception of George 
Washington every boy that ever has lived has 
been both. He has told the truth and he has 
lied. Is a man white or coloured? A mulatto, a 
quadroon, or an octoroon is both. The United 
States census classifies him as coloured if he is 
known to have any negro blood in him. In 
Cuba he is classified as white if he is known to 
have any white blood in him. 
Here we arrive at a question of scientific 
procedure which is often of practical impor- 
tance. How should a thing or an individual 
that is both a and not a be classified? Logic 
is more and more following the common sense 
rule that we follow in every-day life. It says 
that a thing is a if it is more a than not a, at 
any rate if it is much more. A boy is truthful 
if he lies not “never” but, in the language of 
Pinafore, “hardly ever.” A state is republican 
if it usually returns a republican majority. 
In every-day speech we discriminate things 
or individuals that are usually a, or mostly a, 64 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
from things or individuals that are completely 
or always, by saying that those which are 
mostly or usually so-and-so are typically or 
modally so-and-so, “type” having a connota- 
tion of quality, and “mode” a connotation of 
number. 
From the foregoing considerations it follows 
that classes or categories fall into different ar- 
rangements with reference to one another. We 
usually think of them, I suppose, as excluding 
one another, like circles that are externally 
tangential, no part of circle A cutting into 
circle B. We get this arrangement when all 
the facts to be classified are completely and 
always <2, and never to any extent not a\ but 
since a fact may be both a and not a we often 
get an arrangement of categories which are 
partly exclusive, but not wholly so, like circles 
A and B that intersect. And because any cate- 
gory may be divided into sub-categories, and 
any one of these into sub-sub-categories, and 
so on, we may get an arrangement like that of 
intra-secting circles which touch at one point 
like hoops of different sizes held in one hand. 
Of sub-classification there is more now to be 
said. 
Within any class A, comprising all individ- 
uals that possess the attribute a and excluding 
all that do not possess it, there may be in- Classification of Societal Facts 
65 
dividuals that possess also an attribute but 
not attribute c or d\ other individuals that pos- 
sess also an attribute r, but not attribute b 
or d\ and yet other individuals who possess 
attribute d but not attribute b or c. These 
differing sub-divisions of A constitute respec- 
tively the sub-classes Ab, Acy Ad. Each is 
formed by dichotomy. 
In like manner, within any designated sub- 
class Ab, there may be individuals that possess 
in addition to the attribute ab, the attribute m\ 
others that possess, beside the attribute ab, the 
attribute n\ and yet others that possess, be- 
side ab, the attribute o, and so on, thereby 
constituting the sub-sub-classes, abm, abn,abo, 
each formed by subjecting ab to dichotomy. 
Significant implications of the foregoing 
propositions must be borne in mind. Neglect 
to discriminate them means fallacy. One of 
these implications is, that the more individuals 
a class comprises, the more sub-classes or sub- 
categories it comprises: the bigger a conven- 
tion is, the more kinds of cranks we find in it. 
A second implication is, that each successive 
sub-classification adds a new attribute to the 
number of attributes which each member of 
the new sub-class possesses. In number of 
attributes a sub-class is also a superclass. A 
third implication is that the larger the number 66 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
of attributes possessed by a class or sub-class, 
and therefore the further sub-classification 
proceeds, the smaller is the number of in- 
dividuals in the newly formed sub-class. If 
we sub-divide the category “citizens” until we 
arrive at a sub-category in which everybody 
has an understanding mind, honest habits, an 
unselfish purpose, and education enough to 
know the difference between a tax and a divi- 
dend, we shall arrive at a number that will not 
fatigue a finite intelligence to grasp. 
It is obvious that classification carried out 
into sub-classification cannot be comprehen- 
sively plotted by a succession of points along 
a single line. Categories of equal rank, A, B, 
C, D, or ay r, d, (for example, riveters, brick- 
layers, carpenters, plasterers) are legitimately 
and most conveniently indicated by a succes- 
sion of names or symbols, preferably following 
one another along a level line like the column 
headings of a table. Categories of sub-classifi- 
cation, sub-sub-classification, sub-sub-sub- 
classification, and so on, (for example, riveters 
who have become foremen, riveters who have 
been foremen and have become superintend- 
ents, and so on) must then be indicated by 
sub-headings along horizontal lines of succes- 
sively lower and lower level, following one 
another in a vertical succession down the col- Classification of Societal Facts 
67 
umns. Sorting individuals or things into groups 
of equal rank, or level, is coordinate classifica- 
tion. Sorting the individuals in any one of 
these groups into a succession of sub-categories, 
by successive dichotomies, is subordinate clas- 
sification. The horizontal line of column head- 
ings and the vertical line of column descent 
enclose a surface, any point in which represents 
a possible classificatory relationship to any 
other point. Comprehensive classification, 
therefore, can be plotted as a tabular diagram, 
or pattern, but not otherwise. 
Since the column of sub-classes made by 
successive dichotomies is constituted by taking 
into account at every step an additional at- 
tribute and excluding all individuals that do 
not possess it, it may be of any one of four 
descriptions. The addition may be quantita- 
tive only, for example, a number as in the suc- 
cession one, two, three. This succession, ar- 
ranged from smallest to largest or from largest 
to smallest, constitutes an array. All statistical 
classifications are arrays, for example, age 
classes, one to four years, inclusive, five to 
nine years, inclusive, ten to fourteen years, 
inclusive.3 
3 The reader unfamiliar with these matters may fall into the error of 
finding this account of age classification a contradiction of the statement 
that the further sub-classification is extended the smaller is the number of 
individuals in each successive class, because he will probably call to mind 68 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
A column of successive sub-classes of a sec- 
ond description is a gradation. It plots in- 
tensities, as of darkness or light, of bitterness 
or sweetness, or of pain or pleasure. 
A column of successive sub-classes of a third 
description shows a trend, or a line of direc- 
tion. Along a straight road a hundred individ- 
uals may walk to a point <2, where fifty of 
them branch off. The remaining fifty may 
continue on the straight road to a point 
where twenty may branch off. The remaining 
thirty may continue to a point r, and so on. 
All who continue on the straight road follow a 
trend. 
Finally, a column of successive sub-classes 
may show genesis. Some of the earlier ver- 
tebrates became fishes. The others did not. 
Some of the fishes became amphibia. The 
others did not. Some of the amphibians be- 
came reptiles. The others did not. Some of 
the reptiles became mammals, while others 
became birds, and others continued to be 
reptiles. Some of the mammals became pri- 
mates. The others did not. At length some 
the fact that in a sorting of a population into age classes there will be, like 
enough, more individuals in one of the intermediate classes than in one or 
another of the preceding or younger classes. There is, however, no contra- 
diction. The distribution which he has in mind is a distribution not of all 
those born, but of those living. A distribution of all born, gives, of course, 
a succession of numerically smaller and smaller classes. Classification of Societal Facts 
69 
of the primates took to the ground and became 
men. The others stayed in the trees and are 
apes to this day. 
The subject matter of classification may con- 
sist of concepts only. The dichotomies are 
made in thought only. The objective universe 
consists of groups which are actual. They are 
segregations of things and activities. The di- 
chotomies have been made by actual processes 
which have been observed by men and can 
be observed now. 
Societal facts are actualities. Classification 
of them is a sorting of them into actual, or as 
we usually say, factual, groups, the dichoto- 
mies of which have been actually made by 
processes which men have observed and may 
now observe. Here, much condensed, is the 
resulting scheme of societal genesis.4 
4 In adapting the arrangement to page dimensions it has been necessary 
to identify items by numbers and letters. In a broad tabular arrangement 
items in which a given number, the same number with a, and the same 
number with ac all occur would stand on the same horizontal line; and items 
in which a number with b and the same number with bd would in like manner 
stand on the same horizontal line. 70 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
CATEGORICAL SCHEME OF SOCIETAL GENESIS 
I II III 
I Factual Categories 
subject to Factual 
Dichotomous Divi- 
sion by or in an 
Observed Process 
(Each Identified by 
a number.) 
II Alternative Possi- 
bilities (Each Iden- 
tified by a number 
and one letter.) 
Ill Resultant Categories 
(Each Identified by 
a number and two 
letters.) 
1. Psychological 
i a. Cause 
lac. Stimulus or situa- 
tion 
ib. Effect 
ibd. Reaction 
2. Reaction to one 
given stimulus or 
situation 
2a. By one individual 
only 
2ac. Singularistic beha- 
viour: Individual 
psychology Classification of Societal Facts 
71 
lb. By more than one 
individual 
abd. Pluralistic beha- 
viour: Societal psy- 
chology, sociology 
3. Pluralistic behaviour 
3 a. Responses of individ- 
uals, prevailingly 
dissimilar 
3b. Responses of indi- 
viduals, prevailingly 
similar 
3bd. Like behaviour 
4. Like behaviour 
4a. Not concentrative 
upon a point or place 
4b. Concentrative upon 
a point or place 
4bd. Concourse 
5. Concourse 
5a. Uncomplicated by 
segregative inter- 
stimulation and re- 
sponse 
5b. Complicated by seg- 
regative interstim- 
ulation andresponse 
£bd. Intra-responding 
group 
6. Intra-responding 
group 
6a. Not composed of in- 
dividuals of one race 
or species only 
6b. Composed of indi- 
viduals of one race 
or species only 72 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
6bd.Psychologically 
homogeneous kin- 
dred 
7. Psychologically ho- 
mogeneous kindred 
7a. Not of both sexes 
andnot ofmorethan 
one generation 
7b. Of both sexes and 
of more than one 
generation 
7bd. Self-perpetuating 
psychologically ho- 
mogeneous kindred 
8. Self-perpetuating 
psychologically ho- 
mogeneous kindred 
8a. Not consorting 
8b. Consorting 
8bd. Self-perpetuating 
psychologically ho- 
mogeneous kinship 
group 
9. Self-perpetuating 
psychologically ho- 
mogeneous kinship 
group 
9a. Without conscious- 
ness of kind: gre- 
garious 
9ac. Swarm, flock, herd, 
of animals 
9b. With consciousness 
of kind: social 
9bd. Society, self-per- 
petuating societal 
group, of human 
beings: folk Classification of Societal Facts 
73 
10. Self-perpetuating 
societal group: 
folk 
10a. Not increasing 
10b. Increasing, and in 
certain instances 
sending forth emi- 
grants and colonists 
lobd. Social population 
11. Social population 
11 a. Not becoming com- 
plicated by receiv- 
ing immigrants 
nac. Homogeneous 
ub. [Complicated by re- 
ceiving immigrants 
nbd. Heterogeneous: 
Composite 
12. Composite social 
population 
12a. Not prevailingly of 
like impulses, be- 
liefs, ideas, and pur- 
poses 
12b. Prevailingly of like 
impulses, beliefs, 
ideas, and purposes 
i2bd. Like-minded popu- 
lation 
13. Like-minded pop- 
ulation 
13a. Associative only 
13b. Associativeandcon- 
certive 
I3bd. Concerted action: 
combined action,co- 
operation 74 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
14- Concerted action 
14a. Emotional and spas- 
modic 
14b. Deliberative and or- 
derly 
I4bd. Folk-ways, produc- 
tive of a cultural 
heritage 
15. Folk-ways 
15a. Non-appreciativeof 
factors and products 
15b. Appreciative of fac- 
tors and products, 
esteeming and valu- 
ing them; creating 
societal values 
I5bd. Culturistic society 
16. Culturistic society 
16a. Not producing ini- 
tiators, leaders 
16b. Producing initiators, 
leaders 
i6bd. Protocracy 
17. Protocracy 
17a. Not developing into 
or creating a definite 
ruling group or ruler 
17b. Developing into or 
creating a definite 
ruling group or ruler 
I7bd. Coordinatedsociety 
18. Coordinated so- 
ciety 
18a. Not integrating 
18b. Integrating 
i8bd. Organized society 
19. Organized society 
19a. Not controlling Classification of Societal Facts 
75 
19b. Controlling 
igbd. Societal self-control 
20. Societal self-con- 
trol 
20a. Restrictive 
20b. Liberative 
2obd. Adjustment 
21. Adjustment 
21 a. Not productive of 
desired change 
21b. Productive of de- 
sired change 
21 bd. Achievement 
22. Achievement 
22a. Not making life 
more desirable 
22b. Making life more 
desirable 
22bd. Amelioration 
23. Amelioration 
23a. Not favouring ur- 
vival of departures 
from type or mean 
23b. Favouring survival 
of departures from 
type or mean 
23bd. Variation 
24. Variation 
24a. Not adapting indi- 
viduals to social life 
24b. Adapting individu- 
als to social life 
24bd. Socialization 
25. Socialization 
25a. Not increasing self- 
determination and 
responsibility of in- 
dividuals 76 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
25b. Increasing self- 
determination and 
responsibility of in- 
dividuals 
2$bd. Individuation 
In the world of actualities things do not stay 
put; they move about. In new positions their 
activities may change, and the incidence of 
activity inevitably does change. Plants, ani- 
mals, and human beings do not behave forever 
in the same way. They change their habits. 
Consequently, in classification facts shift about 
from category to category. 
It follows that in sociology a study of so- 
cietal variability, carried out into a classifi- 
catory scheme, and thereby checked up, is of 
correlative importance with the study of so- 
cietal genesis, in like manner carried out. 
In the scheme of variability it is necessary 
to include categories and details which may be 
omitted from the scheme of genesis, and from 
the foregoing condensed scheme have been. 
Among these are the sub-categories of causa- 
tion. The scheme must begin with an analysis 
of the creative dynamics of a people. The 
scheme must include, also, integrations of co- 
ordinate categories. The scheme as a whole, 
therefore, is more than a column of successive 
sub-classes. It is a diagram or pattern. Greatly 
condensed, it follows. Classification of Societal Facts 
77 
Categorical Scheme of Societal Variability 
Creative DynamicsofaPeople Attitude of neighbouring 
Regional Give and Take peoples 
Situation Hostile 
Inaccessible Friendly 
Accessible Population (dominant in- 
Temperature habitants) 
Hot to torrid Fecundity 
Cold to arctic Births not exceeding 
Humidity deaths 
Wet Births exceeding deaths 
Arid Mobility 
Rock, soil, water Quiet, non-migratory 
Barren, non-utilizable Restless, migratory 
Productive, utilizable Arrangement 
Inhabitants Dispersive 
Indigenous plants Aggregative 
Multiplying Composition 
Not multiplying Homogeneous 
Indigenous animals Heterogeneous 
Multiplying Culturistic Society 
Not multiplying Like-mindedness 
Aboriginal or other sub- Impulses, beliefs, ideas, 
jugated human in- and purposes pre- 
habitants vailingly unlike 
Multiplying Impulses, beliefs, ideas, 
Not multiplying and purposes pre- 
Circumstantial Pressure vailingly alike 
Calamity Consciousness of kind 
Improbable, infrequent Emotional predomi- 
Imminent, frequent nantly 
Pestilence Reflective predomi- 
Occasional, infrequent nantly 
Recurrent, frequent Collective action 
Hardships and dangers Spasmodic, tumultu- 
Of isolation ous 
Of crowding Deliberative, orderly 78 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Folk-ways Adjustment 
Not enriching cultural Not progressive 
heritage Progressive 
Enriching cultural her- Achievement 
itage Amelioration 
Organized society Not cumulative 
Organizing agent Cumulative 
Indefinite, protocratic Variation 
Definite, a ruling per- Variates not multiply- 
sonage or group ing 
Relationships Variates multiplying 
Not integrated Socialization 
Integrated Not progressive 
Control Progressive 
Restrictive Individuation 
Liberative Not progressive 
Progressive 
It may be objected to these schemes that 
they are not the only possible ones, inasmuch 
as there may be as many dichotomies of a class 
as there are attributes discoverable in it from 
which to make a selection. To this objection 
I reply: Try it out and see if you can make 
other schemes of societal facts which shall con- 
form to five scientific requirements, namely, 
(i) they shall be at no point pragmatic, but at 
every point consistent and descriptive; (2) the 
line of genesis shall be a self-consistent trend 
of dichotomies; (3) the diagram or pattern shall 
be self-consistent and comprehensive; (4) the 
dichotomies shall be not only logical but also 
observable actual processes of an actual world; Classification of Societal Facts 
79 
(5) the resultant classes shall be more than 
concepts: they shall be realities of flesh and 
blood, behaviour and state. I wish you well 
in your attempt, and will only add that I do 
not now recall other schemes of classification 
in the realm of sociology that have conformed 
to the first of these requirements, to say nothing 
of the other four. All that I remember, in- 
cluding many with which I have myself ex- 
perimented, have been more or less pragmatic. CHAPTER V 
THE PLURALISTIC FIELD AND THE SAMPLE 
For statistical purposes any plural number 
of things, qualities, circumstances or happen- 
ings, or other items, is a pluralistic field. If 
the number of items is not too great we can 
count them and one by one scrutinize them. 
“Too great” is a relative term, however, mean- 
ing too great for our resources of money, num- 
ber of competent enumerators at command, 
time, and so on. For the United States Census 
a hundred million and more individuals are not 
too many to count. To study them all one by 
one would be another matter and practically 
impossible. 
Every observable phase of human society is 
statistically a pluralistic field in the same sense 
or way that population is. It is resolvable into 
items, which theoretically may be counted, and 
one by one scrutinized, but which practically 
may be far more numerous (even immensely 
more numerous) than we can either scrutinize 
or count with such limited resources of energy, 
time and means as we command. Even na- 
80 Pluralistic Field and Sample 
81 
tional censuses have rarely undertaken to make 
a complete and trustworthy count of items in 
any societal field other than that of popula- 
tion. To mention only matters of major im- 
portance, there has never yet been in the 
United States a complete count throughout 
the nation of either births or deaths. For a cen- 
tury there was no attempt to count all mar- 
riages. No count of religious believers has been 
satisfactory. Citizens of voting age are enum- 
erated, but those legally qualified to vote are 
not. In all of these fields, however, incomplete 
and otherwise imperfect counts have repeatedly 
been made, and they have cost a great deal of 
money. 
Are these incomplete counts of scientific or 
of practical value? Is there any way of ascer- 
taining how much or how little they are good 
for? 
The statistician calls incomplete counts 
“samplings,” and we assume that they may be, 
and often are, of considerable importance. If 
they are not, quantitative studies of biological, 
psychological and societal phenomena, includ- 
ing matters economic, legal, and political, 
made by individuals or private organizations 
are worthless, for, one and all, they are sampl- 
ings, and our costly reports on stature and 
weight, intelligence rankings, unemployment, 82 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
wages, family budgets, and many other in- 
teresting matters, are but litter on our shelves. 
Theoretically, moreover, this condemnation 
would necessarily be made sweeping, because, 
theoretically every known aggregate of things 
or persons is only a sample of an infinite series; 
and, to go to the other pole of possibility, an 
item, or count, which we assume to be a sample, 
may turn out to be the total aggregate now 
known or knowable. 
In the attempt to determine when and how 
far a sample is a trustworthy and reasonably 
adequate picture of an entire pluralistic field, 
which may safely be used when we wish to 
proceed with inductive research, we have de- 
veloped a theory and a technique of sampling. 
What then is a sample? The statistician 
defines it as any item or plural number of 
items which, we can be reasonably sure, is 
fairly representative of the entire aggregate. 
What, however, do we mean by represent- 
ative? The root meaning of “represent” (r<?, 
again, and to place before, to 
present) has become in modern usage “to 
present in place of something else, to exhibit 
the counterpart or image of.” Thus a painting 
may represent a landscape or a face. Accord- 
ingly, the primary meaningof “representative” 
is, “fitted to represent,” and this phrase, some- Pluralistic Field and Sample 
83 
what expanded, becomes, “fitted to represent” 
truthfully, without misleading, and therefore 
justly. Finally, by further development of the 
implicit idea, we get the meaning, one who, or 
that which, “stands for” another or for others 
“as an agent, deputy or substitute,” without 
misleading or injustice. These definitions make 
sufficiently clear the nature of a true or good 
sample viewed as a representative item or 
count. For scientific purposes a sample is any 
fact (for statistical purposes any item or count) 
which adequately and without misleading stands 
for, or may be taken as a substitute for, an 
entire pluralistic field. 
How and when is such a thing possible? 
Obviously any fact of sort or of size, of 
quality or of quantity, is truly representative 
and therefore may without error be taken as a 
sample of a pluralistic field, if the difference 
between any item whatsoever of the aggregate 
and any other item of it is negligible for the 
purpose in hand. There is no need to pick 
and choose, and it makes no difference whether 
we pick and choose or not. We may shut our 
eyes and take an item, or two or three or more 
items, at random; or, if we prefer, we may look 
over the field and deliberately select an item 
or items according to our whim. Either way 
there is no possibility of error; the item or 84 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
the count of items taken is a good sample of 
the entire lot. Such a field, in which all dif- 
ferences are negligible, we call “homogeneous.” 
Among all observed pluralistic fields, how- 
ever, (not to mention all possible ones) the 
strictly homogeneous aggregates are relatively 
few. Far more numerous are the approximately 
homogeneous fields in which the differences 
between item and item are not quite negligible 
for the purpose in hand. Whatever item or 
count is taken from one of these fields as a 
sample, will be, in appreciable measure, in- 
adequate or misleading. As far as we can we 
must minimize error. Obviously, we shall only 
magnify it if we pick and choose, selecting our 
item or count according to our preference, prej- 
udice, or other bias. Therefore, in taking our 
sample of such a field we must take it at 
random, thereby eliminating bias. 
This consideration discloses a significant fal- 
lacy in our theory of “representation” as a 
political device. Speaking in severely scientific 
terms, the representatives that we send to 
legislative bodies are not strictly good samples 
of their constituencies. We elect them, that 
is to say, we permit and expect every voter to 
exercise choice. He may and does give full 
expression to his preference, prejudice or whim. 
To get a true sample of our political popula- Pluralistic Field and Sample 
85 
tion we should resort to the casting of lots, 
as the Athenians at one time did. Whether 
that would be good politics or not, is another 
question. 
Yet more numerous than approximately 
homogeneous aggregates are those which are 
unmistakably heterogeneous. Think of the 
variety of blossoms in the most unpretentious 
flower-garden; of the kinds of grasses, clovers, 
and weeds in an old pasture. Go through a 
forest, and count the species of deciduous trees, 
or of pines. These all are highly heterogeneous 
fields, but their heterogeneity is as nothing by 
comparison with the variegation of the plural- 
istic fields that make up human society. Think 
of the range of age classes in any population. 
Think of the ethnic composition of the Ameri- 
can people, the native and the foreign-born, 
the colour races, the nationalities. How many 
sects or religious denominations should we 
find if we could discover them all ? How many 
occupations, each calling for a distinctive pro- 
ficiency, could we count? 
When we reflect upon variegations like these 
it does not take us long to perceive that no 
one item or count of items taken at random 
without other procedure can be an acceptable 
sample of a heterogeneous field. Chance would 
give us perhaps a daffodil or a hollyhock as our 86 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
sample of a garden containing also tulips, 
roses, pansies, and a dozen other common 
flowers in their respective seasons. It would 
give us Catholics or Baptists, as like as not, 
as our sample of a religious population contain- 
ing also Presbyterians, Methodists, Second 
Adventists, Mormons, and fifty-seven or more 
other varieties of religious experience. What 
further procedure then is necessary? 
Plainly our sample must be a compound 
affair, and our first step toward obtaining its 
factors and putting them together is to resolve 
our pluralistic field into component kinds of 
items. 
Every qualitative kind or quantitative class 
that is significant for our purpose must be in- 
cluded, and each kind or class must be ap- 
proximately homogeneous. All items within 
the kind or class must be alike, and likeness, 
as was explained in a discussion of classifica- 
tion must be conceived as a difference less than 
a limiting difference which is significant for 
our purpose. In like manner, a quantitative 
class must be understood to be a plural num- 
ber of quantitative items within limits of in- 
equality which are significant for our purpose.1 
1 Methods of measuring heterogeneity (or approximation to homogene- 
ity) and of ascertaining the limits within which differences are significant, 
are set forth in manuals of statistical theory. Pluralistic Field and Sample 
87 
When the entire heterogeneous field has 
been resolved into component fields, each ap- 
proximately homogeneous according to fore- 
going definitions, a sample of each must be 
taken at random. Each regarded by itself will 
be approximately adequate and not seriously 
misleading. Collectively, however, the com- 
bination of these samples will be inadequate, 
and possibly so far misleading as to be worth- 
less, unless one further precaution is taken. 
The samples may be equally large or small, 
or fortuitously unequal, but qualitative kinds 
and quantitative classes usually are found to 
be respectively composed of unequal numbers 
of units. Each is a relatively large group of 
things, of activities, or of persons, or what not; 
or it is a small group, as may happen. Unless 
these inequalities are allowed for and rep- 
resented the compound sample is misleading. 
Therefore, any sampling of a heterogeneous 
pluralistic field must bring together samples 
taken at random from each homogeneous field 
that is a significant component of the entire 
heterogeneous aggregate, and the size of each 
sample must be proportionate to the relative 
quantitative value of the homogeneous field 
from which it is taken. 
Examples of practically bad and scientific- 
ally worthless samplings of hetergoeneous plu- 88 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
ralistic fields made in societal surveys and else- 
where could be multiplied indefinitely. Let us 
be content for the present with two, which are 
of generally recognized interest and impor- 
tance. 
One is our sampling of public opinion. A 
practice has grown up of interviewing individ- 
uals in various walks of life to ascertain their 
reactions to innumerable matters of belief, 
morals, domestic legislation, and world politics. 
Another practice is that of taking straw votes. 
Most of the samples obtained by either of these 
methods are invalid; they have little value 
even as indications of an actual state of public 
prejudice or conviction. Now and then they 
are taken at random, and they would meet 
scientific requirements if each were taken from 
a homogeneous field; but attention to this 
point is rarely discovered. Interviews and 
straw votes from employers, wage earners, 
shop keepers, and professional men, or from 
Fundamentalists and Modernists, from liberals 
and authoritarians, from internationalists and 
nationalists, are jumbled and scrambled. No 
attempt is made to get reactions from each 
distinctive component group of the entire het- 
erogeneous field of makers of opinion, and to 
see that each is represented in proportion to 
its relative quantitative importance. Pluralistic Field and Sample 
89 
The second example is taken from the prac- 
tice of representative government, already re- 
ferred to. Not only, as was said, are our 
representatives in legislative bodies selections 
rather than samples, but also, even as prefer- 
ences they represent constituencies as terri- 
torial groups only, or, more precisely, they 
directly represent them only on a territorial 
basis. Incidentally or accidentally they may 
represent them also as interest, or as cultural, 
or as proficiency groups; that is to say, as 
capitalistic or proletarian classes, employer or 
wage earner ranks, agricultural or industrial 
blocs, Catholic sodalities or Protestant sects, 
educated or uneducated consortings, and so on. 
The soviet scheme of government, by con- 
trast, is theoretically based upon the idea that 
these interest, cultural, and proficiency group- 
ings, rather than territorial groupings, should 
be represented in the political scheme. Which 
plan is politically better we are not now at- 
tempting to decide. We are here concerned 
only with the scientific question whether, in a 
strictly scientific sense of the term, either plan 
is representative government, and no further 
analysis should be necessary to make it quite 
clear to the statistical mind that it is not. 
Neither the one plan nor the other gives us 
representation within a meaning of the word 90 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
which must be adhered to for scientific pur- 
poses. To make a legislative body really 
representative of a politically organized people 
it would be necessary to constitute it of dep- 
uties from both territorial constituencies and 
bloc constituencies, which are important enough 
to be politically significant; and to apportion 
the representation of the latter as we now ap- 
portion representatives of territorial groups, 
according to the relative quantitative im- 
portance of each group. CHAPTER VI 
THE STUDY OF CASES 
The attribute or trait, in virtue of which 
an individual or other unit is assigned to this 
or that class when we sort things, is an ab- 
straction. We arrive at it by analytical think- 
ing. In the real world it does not exist apart 
from the person or thing that is sorted, and 
in whom or in which it is associated with other 
attributes. No scientific study can prosper 
when this elemental truth is more than tempo- 
rarily forgotten, or is too often or too long 
ignored. Always we must come back from our 
abstractions and our generalizations to a new 
scrutiny of concrete aggregates; to actual 
human individuals, actual animals and plants, 
actual inorganic things. 
Also, we must keep in mind the fact that 
every individual or other so-called unit that 
we can study is in reality an aggregate. It is 
made up of components, each of which is an 
aggregate made up of components, and so on 
back through molecule and atom to electron, 
which looks to us now like ultima thule, but 
presumably is not. 
91 92 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Therefore, it seems, everything that we 
can study is a pluralistic field, and, in strict 
theory (as has already been remarked) every 
pluralistic field in the world of actuality 
which we can actually know is a sample, or 
a part of a sample, taken from an infinite 
field. 
To say all this in so many words is perhaps 
to be too scrupulously academic. To students 
of the older sciences I suspect that it is, but I 
have reason to think that to students of the 
sciences of society it ought to be said now and 
then. The societal field is so extensive and so 
complicated that it is not easy to keep it all 
in view. By keeping it all in view I of course 
do not mean attempting to become proficient 
in the study of every part of it. That would be 
out of the question. I mean only attempting 
to see how every part of the societal field is 
related to every other part, and every aspect 
to every other aspect, and therefore to realize 
the necessity of checking up expert work in 
one domain by expert work in another. At 
the moment I am trying to help the scientific 
student of society to see that there are two 
elementary and fundamental aspects of his 
subject matter which he must continuously 
keep in mind, and never permit to become dis- 
sociated in his thinking. The Study of Cases 
93 
One of these aspects is the distribution of 
every attribute or trait that he discovers. How 
widely, for example, is the attribute “blond- 
ness” distributed in a population; how widely 
is the status “foreign born” distributed; how 
widely is thecondition dependency distributed; 
and so on? This is a statistical aspect. 
The other aspect to be kept in mind is, 
what and how many distinguishable attributes 
are found in first in any reason- 
ably good sample of a pluralistic field; second, 
in any given component group or individual 
or other unit entering into the composition 
of the sample. For example, what other con- 
ditions besides dependency, and what attri- 
butes of status, habit or trait may be discovered 
in the make-up of a dependent family or a 
dependent individual? 
It is plain that we have here two definitely 
contrasted procedures. In the one we follow 
the distribution of a particular trait, quality, 
habit or other phenomenon as far as we can. 
In the other we ascertain as completely as we 
can the number and variety of traits, qualities, 
habits, or what not, combined in a particular 
instance. The first of these procedures has 
long been known as the statistical method, 
which of course it is. The second procedure 
has almost as long been known as the case 94 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
method, or the study of cases. It is sometimes 
called the monographic or intensive method, a 
name associated with the life work of LePlay. It 
is also sometimes called the diagnostic method. 
The term last named reminds us that at this 
point we should observe the distinction be- 
tween case study and case work. In case work 
the social worker of whatever description is 
attempting to bring about a reconditioning 
and improvement in his “case.” The nurse 
cooperating with the physician is attempting 
to restore her patient to health. The psychia- 
trist is attempting to bring about an orderly 
and normal mental functioning. The worker 
among destitute or degenerate families is at- 
tempting to bring about normal relations, activ- 
ities and status. The neighbourhood worker is 
trying to clean up, stimulate and re-order the 
neighbourhood; the community worker is un- 
dertaking to deepen the sense of community 
responsibility, to make community organiza- 
tion more complete and effective, and to raise 
the standards of community welfare. Real 
achievement in any of these fields, it should be 
unnecessary to argue, is impossible unless 
effort is directed by knowledge. The “case” 
must be diagnosed and understood before it 
can be effectively handled and bettered. This 
preliminary enterprise is case study. The Study of Cases 
95 
The range of case study in the societal do- 
main is as wide as human interests, its con- 
tinuity is as prolonged as human history. The 
case under investigation may be one human 
individual only or only an episode in his life; 
or it might conceivably be a nation or an em- 
pire, or an epoch of history. The cases with 
which social workers are apt to be concerned 
are individuals, families, neighbourhoods and 
communities. The cases in which ethnologists, 
historians, and statesmen are apt to be inter- 
ested are non-civilized tribes, culture areas, 
historical epochs and politically organized 
populations. Demographers are concerned 
with the evolution and degeneration of popu- 
lations in respect of their biological and psy- 
chological quality, and of their vitality. 
The study of cases in a field as complicated 
as the societal has naturally enough been more 
or less unsystematic. Sometimes it has been 
more pretentious than painstaking, but on the 
whole it has made headway. It has developed, 
or rather it is developing, a technique, by no 
means perfect but distinctly promising. The 
first rule and principle of it is summarized in 
the one word “thoroughness.” The first task, 
when taking up the study of a case, is to find 
out all that can be found out about it, and to 
scrutinize every seeming fact to make sure of 96 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
actuality. A careful person of good intelli- 
gence, who is plodding and conscientious, can 
become a successful student of cases; a bril- 
liant student who is careless and unmethodical 
never can. The second rule and principle of 
case study is that as rapidly and as widely as 
possible comparisons must be made of case 
with case. There is always a presumption that 
a case is, to a certain extent, unique; that 
nothing exactly like it is to be found else- 
where or has ever appeared before, and it is of 
the first importance that its exact variation 
from everything else should be determined; 
but there is also a presumption that in many 
respects it is like other cases. If it is, a certain 
norm, or “usual” complex of factors can be 
ascertained. To describe it accurately is essen- 
tial. Quantitative data may be discovered. It 
may be found that in certain numerical fea- 
tures a case is average, below average, or above 
average. The measure should be determined. 
The greater part of social work must neces- 
sarily proceed with reference to norms of one 
or another kind. The case that is to be 
bettered in any way is presumably one that in 
various particulars is below normal, average 
or standard. If it were not known or suspected 
to be so it would probably not receive atten- 
tion as one calling for the effort of the social The Study of Cases 
97 
worker, and there would be no particular point 
in trying to help it. Therefore, plainly enough, 
it is the duty of the diagnostician to determine 
with as much exactness as possible what the 
norm, average or standard for this class of 
cases is. 
Roughly, it usually is determined by case 
observers and monographists by mere obser- 
vational comparison. The norms arrived at 
are approximations only. But such studies are 
year by year becoming more precise, which 
means that statistical methods are being more 
and more employed and perfected. They are 
even being introduced with success into eth- 
nological studies and into studies of legisla- 
tion. In demographic studies they are, of 
course, highly developed, and invariably are 
employed, as they are also at the other end of 
the case range, namely, in strictly scientific 
physiological and psychiatric studies of indi- 
viduals. It is in the middle range, namely in 
studies of families, neighbourhoods and com- 
munities that exact methods are least devel- 
oped and in which, it is to be hoped, they will 
presently receive more attention. 
The circumstance that students of social 
work cases are largely occupied with sub- 
normal and abnormal phenomena creates an 
intellectual danger which calls for mention. 98 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Unless these investigators are constantly on 
guard their thinking gets “off side.” They see 
humanity and the societal order in deceptive 
colours, inaccurate proportions and distorted 
perspectives. Now and then they acquire un- 
fortunate “hunches.” To correct these errors 
and to avoid bias social workers and students 
of social work cases need to keep in touch with 
researches that are being carried on in the 
study of normal social and societal evolution, 
and to familiarize themselves with attested 
results. There has been much discussion of the 
value (or lack of value) of historical and sys- 
tematic sociology for investigators in the fields 
of deficiency, delinquency, and dependency, 
and of neighbourhood conditions. Teachers and 
social workers have been interviewed and their 
opinions have been collated. The net result 
has been an expression of doubt, running into 
dogmatic denial, of the “practical” value of 
sociology. If I may be permitted to express an 
individual reaction to this attitude, it is that 
the unbelievers have missed the point. I do 
not recall instances in which the writers of 
replies to questionnaires have pointed out 
what I believe to be the most substantial and 
important service of sociology to social 
workers. It cannot give them rules of tech- 
nique; those must be developed out of trial and The Study of Cases 
99 
error experimenting. But sociology can give 
them, and should give them,poise and balance, 
a comprehensive view, a sense of relative 
values, an apprehension of proportions and of 
probabilities. Attentive study of the trend 
and sweep of societal evolution from primal 
folk-ways through barbarism and historic civi- 
lizations, to the comprehensiveness and com- 
plexity of our existing societal order cannot 
fail to nurture the saving grace and the sanity 
of common sense. 
One further aspect of case phenomena is sig- 
nificant, and an increasing recognition of it 
will greatly facilitate fruitful case study. Any 
case whatsoever is either fortuitious or histori- 
cal. The fortuitious case is accidental or occa- 
sional. It “just happens,” once, or now and 
then. Often it is generative. That is to say, at 
the moment when it comes under observation 
the complicated phenomena which it presents 
are arising and beginning an evolution which 
may go on indefinitely. The historical case 
already when we encounter it “has a past.” 
Study of the historical case may or may not 
reveal origins; the data may have been lost. 
The generative case illuminates as nothing else 
can the beginnings of things, the process of 
causation. Generative cases are every day, 
every hour arising in human society, and to 100 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
this fact we owe the possibility that one of 
these days we shall begin really to understand 
the nature of our societal activities and rela- 
tionships; but if we were to study these only 
we should go far astray in our attempts to 
understand what processes have in them real 
promise of continuity and contribution to 
human well-being. To get knowledge of 
this latter sort we must learn also, as the his- 
torians have learned, how to study with 
scientific care and precision the historical case. 
In point of logic scientific method in history 
is only an application of those procedures of 
scrutiny which all sciences avail themselves of 
to determine fact, and which in earlier pages I 
have described, but it is an application of them 
to one class of facts in particular, and it has 
become highly detailed and technical. 
The facts with which history has particu- 
larly to do are facts of record, and these are 
indispensable not only for history in the nar- 
rower meaning of the word but also in every 
domain of science and art, since an observation 
once made exists thenceforth only as recorded. 
Therefore, in the systematic accumulation and 
comparison of observations in any field of 
scientific study, it is necessary to use or to rely 
upon the technical procedures of historical crit- 
icism. The Study of Cases 
101 
These procedures comprise, first the discrim- 
ination of all secondary sources (including 
abstracts and paraphrases) from primary 
sources; second, the discrimination of copies 
(including both variants and exact transcripts) 
from originals; third, the analysis of originals 
into components or elements, any of which 
may have an alluring history; and fourth, the 
scrutiny of testimonies recorded. 
The critical study of records, documentary 
and other, variously known as archaeology, 
paleography and epigraphy, proceeds through 
the systematic comparison of record with 
record, or group of records with other groups, 
in which all perceived differences and resem- 
blances are noted. 
Upon human testimony all our inferences 
and conclusions from narrative and statistical 
data ultimately rest. When we have dis- 
covered that historical or statistical docu- 
ments are genuine as records, we still have to 
inquire whether the story they tell is credible. 
The scientific sifting of testimony, proceeds 
by observing resemblances and differences 
among witnesses, and by grouping or grading 
them with reference to specific qualifications. 
Only those witnesses are competent: 
I. Whose position in time and space is, or 
has been such with reference to the alleged 102 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
fact, that they can or could have seen or heard 
it. This throws out hearsay, or secondary tes- 
timony, as of secondary value. 
2. Who (a) have no motive to falsify, and 
who (b) are not liars by habit. 
3. Who are intellectually competent to ob- 
serve or to hear and to report accurately; (a) 
sane and not feeble minded, (b) not under 
hypnotic control, (c) not under the control of 
an overmastering passion or interest, and (d) 
not under the control of a mastering idea or 
suggestion. 
Until recently the challenging and sifting of 
testimony has been more meticulously, and, 
now and then, more expertly conducted in 
courts of justice than elsewhere. Cross exam- 
ination chiefly has been relied on, and histo- 
rians have lamented their inability to put dead 
witnesses on the stand, and to exclude irrele- 
vant and misleading allegations by application 
of standardized rules. Experimental re- 
searches of psychology have now shown that 
legal procedures and safeguardings are far 
from satisfactory. Occurrences of which the 
observers have had no previous intimation 
have been enacted in the presence of excep- 
tionally competent witnesses, in one instance 
a congress of psychologists. Their written re- 
ports of doings and sayings have been com- The Study of Cases 
103 
pared with one another and with the unbiased 
testimony of cinema and dictophone. The 
revelations of human fallibility have been dis- 
concerting. When truth is what we want, the 
eye witness must be checked up by circum- 
stantial evidence, as that in turn, must be 
checked by the eye witness. CHAPTER VII 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CASUAL GROUPS 
Among casual cases of interest to social 
workers, social psychologists, and sociologists, 
are groups fortuitously or incidentally assem- 
bled. They are of great number and variety 
and they offer data of exceptional value to the 
alert sociologist. An incredible amount of ma- 
terial appears day by day in the newspapers, 
and most of this goes to waste. It has not been 
checked up, item by item, and usually it can- 
not be; but when masses of it are assembled 
the errors are found to be in the main compen- 
satory: they cancel out. Watch and ward 
must be kept, to be sure, against errors which 
instead of cancelling accumulate. Usually 
something queer or distorted in the picture 
they present, or in the implication they sug- 
gest, gives warning of them. 
To collect and distribute this data we must 
have a suitable device to work with. The 
schedule here presented will be found to be a 
serviceable instrument for catching and sort- 
ing facts of sociological significance. 
104 Significance of Casual Groups 
105 
The examples are given as filled out by com- 
petent persons who analyzed the material, 
names and dates being omitted. The letter X 
means “Yes.” In the first example the 
schedule is reproduced in detail and complete. 
A Record of Pluralistic Reaction 
Source 
Name of newspaper or other source 
Place of publication Date 
The situation or stimulus— 
Peril of 15 men in a boat in a bad sea 
When Where, a beach What (describe briefly) 
Prearranged Preannounced Otherwise foreseen 
Unforeseen X Unexpected X or anticipated 
The reaction 
Number of individuals participating—hundreds 
Counted Estimated X Guessed at 
Adults only Minors only Adults and minors X 
Men or boys (or men and boys) only—chiefly men 
Women or girls (or women and girls) only Both sexes X 
Colour races (e.g. white, yellow, black) specify—various 
Nationalities (e.g. Irish, Italian, Polish) specify—various 
Citizens only Aliens only Citizens and aliens X 
Religions (e. g. Catholic, Methodist, Jewish) specify— 
various 
Occupations (e. g. farmers, bankers, doctors, miners, 
railroad trainmen, bricklayers) specify—various 
Reaction spontaneous X Reaction promoted by Ex- 
ample X Appeal X Pressure Drive Bullying 
Coercion 
Reaction Quiet Lively X Orderly X Disorderly 
Turbulent Riotous Violent 
After each of the following specify whom or what 
Interest in—the rescue of the men 106 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Recognition or acknowledgement of—humanitarian impulses 
Repudiation, disavowal, or denial of 
Confidence in, belief in 
Suspicion, distrust, disbelief of 
Sympathy manifested for or with—the imperiled men, their 
families and rescuers 
Antagonism manifested against 
Countenance of 
Discountenance of 
Approval of 
Disapproval of 
Active support of—rescuers 
Active opposition to 
Action Undirected Directed AT 
Action Unorganized Organized X 
In the next three examples only filled out parts of the 
schedule are reproduced. 
Example 2 
Situation or stimulus—eviction of tenants 
Prearranged X Anticipated X 
Number of individuals participating—700 
Counted X Adults only X Both sexes X 
Colour races—various 
Nationalities—various 
Citizens and aliens X 
Religions—various 
Occupations—various 
Reaction spontaneous X Influenced by pressure X 
Reaction lively X Orderly X 
Interest in—protection of home andfamily 
Recognition of—protection afforded by court while new quarters 
were being sought 
Antagonism manifested against—landlords 
Approval of—court for tenants 
Disapproval of—rent increase Significance of Casual Groups 
107 
Active opposition to—rent increase 
Action undirected X Unorganized X 
Example 3 
Situation or stimulus—proposed strike 
Number participating—over 100 
Estimated X Adults only X Men only X 
Colour races—white predominant 
Nationalities—various 
Citizens and aliens X 
Occupations—railway and steamship employees 
Reaction spontaneous X Promoted by example X By ap- 
peal X 
Reaction quiet X Orderly X 
Interest in—wages, working conditions, and trade union morale 
Confidence in—trade union officials 
Sympathy for—■)fellow workmen in railroad brotherhoods 
Antagonism manifested against—railroad and steamship com- 
panies 
Approval of—strike 
Active support of—strike 
Action directed X 
Example 4 
Situation or stimulus—public discussion off birth control 
Prearranged X Trouble foreseen 
Number participating—a thousand or more 
Estimated X Adults and minors X Both sexes X 
Colour races—various 
Nationalities—various 
Citizens and aliens X 
Religions—Catholic, Protestant and Jewish 
Occupations—various 
Reaction 
Spontaneous X Promoted by pressure X By coercion X 
Reaction Lively A" Disorderly X Turbulent A" 
Interest in—-free speech 108 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Recognition of—constitutional rights 
Repudiation of—police interference 
Confidence in—worthiness of cause 
Sympathy manifested with—Mrs. Sanger 
Antagonism manifested against—police 
Action undirected X Action unorganized X 
One hundred and thirty-one, a number too 
small to be called a sample, of the numberless 
possible reports in general like the foregoing, 
gave the following distribution of stimuli or 
situations: 
Stimulus or Situation 
Minor occurrence of human origin 87 
Personal example, appeal or intimidation 16 
Insurrection io 
War 8 
Natural resources of a geographical place or 
region 4 
Drought 2 
Conflagration 2 
Storm i 
Epidemic i 
I3I 
Grouping these frequencies we have: cir- 
cumstances consisting only or chiefly of human 
factors, namely, war, insurrection, personal in- 
fluence and minor occurrences of human ori- 
gin, 12i; circumstances consisting of physical 
factors only or chiefly, namely, drought, 
storm, conflagration, epidemic, 6; and regional 
influences, 4. Significance of Casual Groups 
109 
No report was complete, and approximately 
twenty-five percent of all reports were meagre. 
The 31 most imperfect ones were thrown out, 
leaving a round 100. These gave the following 
frequencies: each a percentage: 
Composition 
Citizens and aliens, both 82 
Occupations, various 79 
Both sexes 74 
Adults and minors, both 70 
Religions, various 70 
Nationalities, various 67 
Colour races, various 42 
Character of Reaction 
Reaction spontaneous 74 
Reaction promoted by example 55 
Reaction promoted by appeal 33 
Reaction promoted by pressure 10 
Reaction promoted by coercion 4 
Reaction promoted by bullying 3 
Reaction promoted by drive o 
Reaction orderly 55 
Reaction lively 45 
Reaction quiet 33 
Reaction disorderly 13 
Reaction turbulent 11 
Reaction riotous 4 
Reaction violent 4 
Attitudes 
Instances Reported 
Interest in 92 
Recognition of 66 110 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Sympathy for or with 45 
Approval of 43 
Confidence in 43 
Active support of 31 
Antagonism to 22 
Suspicion of 16 
Active opposition to. 15 
Repudiation of 14 
Discountenance of 12 
Disapproval of 8 
Countenance of 7 
Action 
Action directed 48 
Action unorganized 46 
Action undirected 44 
Action organized 41 
From the foregoing distributions it appears 
that of 100 miscellaneous assemblages more 
than fifty percent were homogeneous in respect 
of colour race, but not fifty percent were 
homogeneous in respect of nationality. They 
were most heterogeneous in respect of the com- 
mingling of citizens and aliens, and of occupa- 
tions, less heterogeneous in respect of age, sex 
and religion. 
Reaction was on the whole spontaneous (an 
approximately simultaneous like response to a 
common stimulus or situation) but in more 
than half of the instances it was stimulated 
also by example. Pressure, coercion, bullying 
and drive played little part. Behaviour was Significance of Casual Groups 
111 
usually orderly; infrequently disorderly or tur- 
bulent; very infrequently riotous or violent. 
Attitudes were distinctly positive, twice as 
often expressing sympathy for or with some- 
body or something as antagonism; almost 
three times as often expressing confidence as 
suspicion; three times as often approving as 
repudiating; more than five times as often ap- 
proving as disapproving. 
In more than half of all instances action was 
not seen to be directed or organized. 
A college or university class is a casual group, 
not fortuitous, but assembled as an incident 
and by-product of the like behaviour of unac- 
quainted individuals who have come from far 
and near in the pursuit of like interests and 
ambitions. It yields data of societal psychol- 
ogy more detailed and exact than that afforded 
by newspapers. 
From the registrar’s office an instructor re- 
ceives registration cards or lists. The registra- 
tions are tentative, but for the moment the 
number of them is an exact measure of a multi- 
individual reaction to a common stimulation. 
Presently some of the registered individuals 
drop out; the others stick and the instructor 
then has two more precise measures, namely, 
the percentage which the persisting responses 112 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
are of the whole number of responses, and the 
ratio of the persisting responses to the non- 
persisting ones. When lectures and class ex- 
ercises are under way differing responses to a 
common stimulus or situation begin to multi- 
ply, and many ratios of like to unlike responses 
become available. 
The following examples of societal data of 
academic casual groups are actual numerical 
distributions obtained from graduate classes 
in sociology at Columbia University. 
Kin-neighbours in Childhood 
The students composing these groups have 
been of both sexes, of various races, and 
nationalities, of differing religious faiths, and 
of miscellaneous experiences; but most of them 
have had one common experience in child- 
hood. They have lived among kindred, and 
presumably their reactions have been condi- 
tioned by kindred. 
The members of a class were questioned and 
instructed: 
1. How many persons of your immediate 
kindred, but not members of your household 
were your near neighbours during any part of 
your childhood ? 
2. How were the neighbouring kindred dis- 
tributed in relation to you? Distinguish Significance of Casual Groups 
113 
cousins as first, and more distant than first, 
and state number of each. Distinguish uncles, 
aunts, and grandparents as paternal or mater- 
nal, and state number of each. 
Reports from 42 writers gave the following 
frequencies: 
Distribution of Kinships 
Total number of neighbouring kindred 882 
Cousins more distant than first 404 
First cousins 232 
Paternal uncles 44 
Maternal aunts 41 
Paternal aunts 40 
Maternal uncles 36 
Paternal grandfathers 16 
Maternal great aunts 15 
Maternal great uncles 15 
Paternal grandmothers 11 
Maternal grandmothers 10 
Maternal grandfathers 9 
Paternal great uncles 4 
Paternal great aunts 4 
Paternal great grandmother 1 
Changes of Residence 
However numerous the relatives that one 
may have about him in early childhood he 
usually “moves” sooner or later, and in Ameri- 
ca most families go from one home to another. 
College and university students and their fam- 
ilies are not exceptions. A class was instructed: 114 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Make a list of instances when you, or mem- 
bers of your immediate family have voluntar- 
ily made a change of residence to another place. 
Let the term “place” be understood to mean 
neighbourhood, village, town or township, 
city, state or country. 
Array of Changes1 
Times 
Persons 
Totals 
o 
3 
o 
i 
o 
o 
2 
9 
18 
3 
7 
21 
4 
7 
28 
5 
5 
6 
o 
0 
7 
3 
21 
— 
—1 
34 
113 
The following reasons for change were 
stated: For advantage created by man, 65; 
for advantage of physical environment, 26; to 
escape disadvantage created by man, 16; to 
escape disadvantage of physical environment, 
6. 
Habits 
Social and societal reactions are determined 
in part by hereditary prepotencies, in part by 
i The numbers here given are too small to be of statistical significance, 
but the table is a pattern for what might be an important inquiry, and is 
presented as such. Significance of Casual Groups 
115 
habits, in part by crises, in part by other situa- 
tions, including the form and action patterns 
that we have to fit into. Whether any one of 
these groups of factors is more effective than 
another we do not at present know, but habits 
are unmistakably important.; They are dis- 
closed with little reserve in recreational and in 
religious activities. A class was requested to 
answer the following questions: 
As nearly as you can remember, or can cal- 
culate from weekly averages, how many times 
a year do you: 
1. Play a physical exercise game, for 
example, tennis, golf, or billiards? 
2. Play a mental exercise game, for 
example, whist or chess? 
3. Read through or attempt to read through 
a new novel? 
4. Go to the theatre? 
5. Go to a concert of vocal or instrumental 
music? 
6. Go to church? 
Replies by 71 individuals gave the following 
distributions: 116 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Times Grouped 
Physical Exercise 
Game 
Mental Exercise 
Game 
Novel 
Times 
Fre- 
quency2 
Times 
Fre- 
quency 
Times 
Fre- 
quency 
o- 24 
31 
0— 24 
42 
0— 2 
16 
25— 49 
*5 
25— 49 
17 
3— 5 
25 
5°— 74 
5 
5°— 74 
4 
6— 8 
9 
75— 99 
4 
75— 99 
I 
9—11 
7 
100—124 
3 
100—124 
I 
12—14 
5 
125—149 
3 
125—149 
0 
15—17 
0 
150-174 
6 
150—174 
3 
18—20 
4 
175—199 
1 
175—199 
1 
21—23 
0 
200—224 
1 
200—224 
0 
24—26 
2 
225—249 
0 
225—249 
0 
27—29 
0 
250—274 
1 
250—274 
1 
30—32 
0 
275—299 
0 
275—299 
0 
33—35 
0 
0 
1 
36—38 
0 
325~349 
0 
39—41 
0 
35°—374 
1 
42—44 
1 
45—47 
0 
48—50 
2 
Total 
71 
Total 
71 
Total 
71 
3 “Frequency” here means number of individuals reporting the given 
number of times. Significance of Casual Groups 
117 
Theatre 
Concert 
Church 
Times 
Fre- 
quency 
Times 
Fre- 
quency 
Times 
Fre- 
quency 
o— 4 
20 
0— 4 
22 
0— 24 
25 
5~ 9 
19 
5— 9 
21 
25— 49 
12 
io—14 
!3 
10—14 
13 
5o— 74 
14 
15—19 
4 
15—19 
7 
75— 99 
9 
20—24 
7 
20—24 
3 
100—124 
6 
25—29 
1 
25—29 
0 
125—149 
3 
30—34 
2 
3°—34 
0 
150—!74 
1 
35—39 
0 
35—39 
1 
175—199 
0 
40—44 
1 
40—44 
1 
200—224 
0 
45—49 
0 
45—49 
0 
225—249 
0 
50—54 
3 
50-54 
2 
250—274 
0 
55—59 
0 
55—59 
1 
275—299 
0 
60—64 
0 
300—324 
0 
65—69 
0 
325—349 
0 
70—74 
0 
35o—374 
0 
75—79 
1 
375—399 
1 
Total 
71 
Total 
7i 
Total 
71 
Folk-ways and Mores of Early Situations 
To a great extent habits and attitudes are 
formed by the folk-ways and mores of the 
communities in which childhood and youth 
are passed, and by the approvals and disap- 
provals of them by persons who attend to our 
“bringing up.” 
The following inquiry brought forth 117 re- 
ports. 118 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
What social gatherings, collective amuse- 
ments, festivals and celebrations that you at- 
tended, saw, or heard about in your childhood 
and youth were disapproved by the persons 
who had most to do with your bringing up? 
Number of Disapprovals Reported3 
Drinking bouts 100 
Beer parties 95 
Dice and card parties 79 
Smokers 64 
Prize Fights 63 
Dancing class 57 
Masquerade ball 50 
Pumpkin and fruit stealing raids 44 
Theatricals 40 
Pigeon shooting 39 
Barn dance 36 
Dogfights 36 
Cakewalk 35 
Hazing ' 35 
Visiting gypsy encampment 34 
Horserace 32 
Turkey raffle 32 
Cockfights 31 
Turkey walk 30 
Hunt ball 25 
Circus 24 
Minstrel show 24 
Medicine show 23 
Street carnivals 20 
Boxing matches 19 
Hallowe’en party 19 
Opera 19 
3 No item is listed which did not appear in as many as ten reports. Significance of Casual Groups 
119 
Snake charming 17 
Frog hunting 15 
Bullfights 13 
New Year’s Eve Festivities 13 
Shooting matches 12 
Election night street assemblages 11 
Mock marriages 11 
Simultaneous Reactions to Fortuitous 
Situations 
The beginnings of societal behaviour are re- 
vealed in spontaneous simultaneous reactions 
to fortuitous situations. The situations of 
most frequent occurrence reveal the character, 
habits and state of the community in which 
the reactions occur. 
A class was requested and instructed: 
Make a list of occasions when you, with ten 
or more other persons, have unexpectedly 
hurried to a particular spot. State the occur- 
rence or incident that attracted you in each 
instance. Group your instances under the fol- 
lowing three heads: 1. Of serious concern to 
the community; 2. of serious concern to an 
individual; 3. of minor importance. 
Replies by no individuals gave the follow- 
ing array of occurrences of serious concern to 
the community: 
Occurrences: Number of Each Kind 
Fires 367 
Fires threatening entire quarter of city 98 Scientific Study of Human Society 
120 
Forest fires 86 
Fires threatening to throw large proportion of 
local population out of employment 71 
Fires threatening an entire village or town 66 
Prairie fires 46 
Floods 99 
Riots 89 
Arrival of relief or rescue to a local population or other 
considerable group in distress or danger 40 
Accidents bringing mourning, suffering or loss to a large 
proportion of a local population 37 
Tornadoes 36 
Incidents of war bringing mourning, suffering or loss to 
a large proportion of a local population 30 
Insurrections 13 
Approach of armed enemy 8 
Earthquakes 6 
Disturbances incident to serious strikes 6 
Lynchings 3 
Invasions of insect pests causing widespread loss 2 
736 
Replies from 115 individuals gave the fob 
lowing array of occurrences of serious concern 
to an individual or to individuals: 
Occurrences: Number of Each Kind 
Fires, not including those listed in foregoing array.... 749 
Arrests or police interferences 5 3 
Accidents 5°4 
Serious but not fatal 324 
Fatal 180 
Crimes not amounting to riot or insurrection 212 
Trespasses 120 
Shipwrecks, without fatality, or ship or boat in distress Significance of Casual Groups 
121 
and not included under “minor accidents” below 77 
Sudden deaths (not included under fatal accidents) 74 
2469 
Replies from 115 individuals gave the fol- 
lowing array of occurrences and incidents of 
minor importance: 
Occurrences: Number of Each Kind 
Spectacles, including parades 948 
Street speaking 883 
Storms, sending people to shelter 786 
Street diversions including street music 1 777 
Celebrations 768 
Proclamations or bulletins 756 
Accidents, minor (not involving death or serious injury 
and not including “shipwreck” above, or “explosion” 
or “runaway” below) 662. 
Fights, human beings 647 
Crowd actions, not amounting to riot or insurrection... 626 
Presence or behaviour of drunken persons 623 
Presence of celebrities 601 
Fights, animals 558 
Absurd or ridiculous incidents 459 
Runaway horses not causing death or serious injury and 
not included under “minor accidents” above 428 
Sudden illnesses 277 
Threats or hostilities not resulting in death or serious 
injury ...... J77 
Explosions not causing death or serious injury and not 
included under “minor accidents” above 112 
Other incidents 159 
10,247 122 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
The Consciousness of Kind 
A casual group usually yields data for a 
study of the consciousness of kind; a univer- 
sity class always does. 
The following inquiry indicates that within 
the limits of the same colour race reaction to 
such physical similarities and dissimilarities as 
eye colour (dark or light), colour of hair, and 
complexion, is too slight to be significant. 
The questions were: 
1. Among acquaintances of your own sex how many persons 
do you habitually think of as your “best friends?” 
2. Of these “best friends” how many are unmistakably like 
you in colour (dark or light) of eyes? 
3. How many are unmistakably unlike you in colour of eyes? 
4. How many are unmistakably like you in colour of hair? 
5. How many are unmistakably unlike you in colour of hair? 
6. How many are unmistakably like you in complexion? 
7. How many are unmistakably unlike you in complexion? 
Replies from 98 individuals gave the follow- 
ing distribution: 
Physical Traits of Best Friends 
Number of best friends 613 
Eyes like own 220 
Hair like own 258 
Complexion like own 258 
Total like traits 736 
Eyes unlike own 249 
Hair unlike own 275 
Complexion unlike own 258 
Total unlike traits 782 Significance of Casual Groups 
123 
The next inquiry indicates that reaction to 
similarities and dissimilarities in taste, in ideas 
and beliefs, in manners, and in morals is un- 
mistakably significant. 
The instructions were: 
1. Write down a list of names of persons of 
your own sex who were your school mates or 
college mates, and for whom you had, as a rule 
and on the whole, a positive liking. Call it list 
“A.” 
2. Write down a list of names of persons of 
your own sex who were your school mates or 
college mates and whom, on the whole, you 
more or less disliked. Call it list “B.” 
3. Make the lists of even number by striking 
off names from the longer list, first a name 
from the bottom, then a name from the top, 
and so proceeding. 
4. Comparing the lists note whether in list 
“A” or in list “B” you find more persons like 
yourself (1) in manners, (2) in morals, (3) in 
tastes, (4) in ideas and beliefs. 
Reports by 113 individuals listed 1328 
names. Acquaintances similar to the reporters 
were distributed as follows: 
Relative Numbers of Persons Like Self in Lists A and B 
Taste 
More acquaintances like self in list A, reported by 100 124 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Acquaintances like self in list A and in list B equal in 
number, reported by 9 
More acquaintances like self in list B, reported by 4 
Ideas and Beliefs 
More acquaintances like self in list A, reported by 99 
Acquaintances like self in list A and in list B equal in 
number, reported by 11 
More acquaintances like self in list B, reported by 3 
Manners 
More acquaintances like self in list A, reported by 93 
Acquaintances like self in list A and in list B equal in 
number, reported by 14 
More acquaintances like self in list B, reported by 6 
Morals 
More acquaintances like self in list A, reported by 88 
Acquaintances like self in list A, and in list B equal in 
number, reported by 20 
More acquaintances like self in list B, reported by 5 
A third inquiry brought out a discriminative 
reaction to nationalities. The instructions 
were: 
Suppose that immigrants of the various 
nationalities were to be admitted into the 
United States in proportion to the number of 
votes that each nationality should receive in a 
referendum balloting, to be conducted as fol- 
lows: 
i. The Federal Government to print and 
distribute a list of nationalities to be considered 
and acted upon. Significance of Casual Groups 
125 
2. Each voter qualified to vote in Federal 
elections to be permitted to cast 100 votes, and 
to distribute them, in accordance with his own 
preferences, among the nationalities of the 
printed list; except that he would be directed 
to cast at least one vote for each nationality 
listed, and instructed that he must not bunch 
more than 25 votes upon any one nationality. 
Subject to the foregoing circumstances and 
conditions how would you distribute 100 votes 
among the following nationalities: 
Seventy individuals distributed 7000 votes 
as follows:4 
Preferences for Nationalities: Distribution 
English 603 Bohemians 152 
Germans 534 Finns 139 
Scotch 450 Greeks 129 
French 407 South Americans. 127 
English Canadians 398 Hungarians 115 
Irish 362 Spaniards 114 
Dutch 353 Rumanians 113 
Swiss 299 Armenians 112 
Swedes 291 Slavs 103 
Norwegians 272 Portuguese 100 
Welsh 267 Bulgarians 97 
Danes 261 Syrians 90 
French Canadians 214 Cubans 87 
Austrians 203 Turks 86 
Italians 187 Mexicans 85 
Russians 167 Arabs 83 
Total 7000 
‘ A list of nationalities was given out. 126 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Reactions to Mores 
Attitudes toward the approved manners and 
morals of a community, commingled with 
aversions and prejudices, appear in avoidance 
reactions to persons. 
Alistof disqualifications, alphabetically 
arrayed, for which a candidate for admission 
to a club might be blackballed, was given out. 
The question and instructions were: 
Suppose a group or club of persons of your 
own sex formed and maintained solely for 
agreeable social intercourse among its mem- 
bers. It has no other purpose or significance 
whatever. As a member of such a group, for 
which of the following disqualifications would 
you vote against the admission of a proposed 
new member? 
A total of 1457 adverse votes was cast by 96 
individuals. The smallest number, 5, was cast 
by one voter only, and the largest number, 24, 
by one voter only. The modal numbers, 14 and 
15, were cast each by 14 voters. Distributions 
follow. 
Array of Adverse Votes 
Notorious cruelty 94 
Dishonesty 90 
Vulgar conversation . 90 
Uncleanliness 83 
Quarrelsomeness 83 Significance of Casual Groups 
127 
Incivility 82 
Loud conversation 81 
Self-assertion 80 
Profane conversation 79 
Frequent lying 79 
Stupidity 79 
Intoxication 79 
Sexual immorality 78 
Fault finding 74 
Habitual gambling 74 
Habitual borrowing 65 
Advocacy of lawlessness 47 
Colour 45 
Ungrammatical speech 24 
Atheism 18 
Dress shabby 10 
Physical deformity 8 
Inability to write correct letter 7 
Nationality 5 
Religion 2 
Wage-earning 1 
Political affiliations o 
Array of Adverse Votes by Men 
Notorious cruelty 74 
Dishonesty, money 73 
Vulgar conversation 71 
Quarrelsomeness 67 
Frequent incivility 67 
Personal uncleanliness 67 
Annoying self-assertion 66 
Loud and uncouth conversation 64 
Frequent lying 63 
General stupidity 63 
Profane conversation 62 
Sexual immorality 61 
Frequent intoxication 60 128 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Habitual fault finding 60 
Habitual gambling 57 
Habitual borrowing 53 
Open advocacy of lawless measures 38 
Colour 35 
Ungrammatical speech 17 
Atheism 17 
Dress shabby 10 
Physical deformity 7 
Inability to write correct letter 6 
Nationality 5 
Religion 2 
Wage earning 1 
Political affiliations o 
1166 
Array of Adverse Votes by Women 
Notorious cruelty 20 
Frequent intoxication 19 
Vulgar conversation 19 
Profane conversation 17 
Loud and uncouth conversation 17 
Dishonesty, money 17 
Sexual immorality 17 
Habitual gambling 17 
General stupidity 16 
Personal uncleanliness 16 
Frequent lying 16 
Quarrelsomeness 16 
Frequent incivility 16 
Annoying self-assertion 14 
Habitual fault finding 14 
Colour 10 
Open advocacy of lawlessness 9 
Ungrammatical speech 7 
Physical deformity 1 Significance of Casual Groups 
129 
Inability to write correct letter i 
Atheism I 
Nationality o 
Religion o 
Wage earning o 
Dress shabby o 
Political affiliations o 
291 
Social and Societal Interests 
All normal persons in youth develop social 
and societal interests. Those developed by col- 
lege and university students are numerous 
and varied. They are not the same, however, 
in all groups and at all times. 
The first of the following distributions was 
obtained from a Columbia University seminar 
before the European war. 
The question submitted was: 
If you were compelled by public opinion, or 
otherwise, to work seven days in each year in 
aid of a social reform, or welfare enterprise, 
six days in aid of a second one, five days in aid 
of a third one, and so on down to one day of 
enforced service, to what reform or welfare 
work would you give the seven days, to what 
the six days, and so on ? 
Replies simultaneously written by 18 indi- 
viduals distributed a total of 462 days as fol- 
lows : 130 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Distribution of 462 Days 
Education 81 
Political Reform 62 
Labour Movement 57 
Charity 53 
Health 46 
Religion 42 
Ethical Development 29 
Public Recreation 24 
Better Housing 16 
Combatting Criminality 15 
Discovery of a Better Social Order 7 
Promoting a Better Social Order 6 
Eugenics 6 
Opposing Socialism and Anarchy 5 
Civic Improvements 4 
Pure Food 4 
Federal Control of Marriage and Divorce 4 
Distribution of Immigrants to Agricultural 
Sections 1 
The second distribution was obtained a few 
days later from a lecture class. The question 
submitted was: 
How would you distribute $100 among as 
many as ten and not more than twenty causes 
in which you feel interested? 
Replies simultaneously written by 106 indi- 
viduals distributed $10,600 as follows: 
Distribution of $10,600 
Education$ 1009 
Prevention of Diseases 927 
Improvement of Living Conditions 917 Significance of Casual Groups 
131 
Child Protection 908 
Scientific Research 892 
More Equal Distribution of Economic Pro- 
ducts 7°9 
Religion 615 
Relief of Sick or Injured 613 
Art or Music 567 
Temperance 543 
Relief of Destitution 542 
Reform of Law and Procedure 522 
Prevention or Suppression of Crime 506 
Reform of Political Activities 501 
Suppression of Vice 490 
Prevention of Cruelty 339 
Concurrent Decision 
In communities in which questions of 
public policy are talked about, discussed, 
mooted, concurrent decision is arrived at by 
voting. 
Many individuals may agree in one decision 
or purpose, not many individuals in many de- 
cisions or purposes. Therefore a frequency 
distribution of the votes of many individuals 
on many questions at one time under consider- 
ation, is normally modal, and probably 
normally a skew. 
These a -priori presumptions find support, 
good as far as it goes, in the following frequency 
distribution. A list of 60 proposals taken from 
legislative calendars and party platforms and 
alphabetically arrayed was given out, and a 132 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
class was asked to write “Yes” or “No” 
against each. 
A total of 2562 votes was cast by 82 indi- 
viduals. The frequency distribution was: 
Frequency Distribution of Votes on 60 Proposals 
Cast by 
Yes Votes 
individuals 
numbering 
Total 
17 
1 
17 
18 
0 
0 
19 
2 
38 
20 
0 
0 
21 
0 
0 
22 
0 
0 
23 
0 
0 
24 
3 
72 
25 
4 
100 
26 
4 
104 
27 
I 
27 
28 
3 
84 
29 
7 
203 
30 
4 
120 
3i 
8 
248 
32 
5 
160 
33 
J3 
429 
34 
7 
238 
35 
9 
315 
36 
3 
108 
37 
5 
185 
38 
3 
114 
82 
2562 
Social Cooperation 
With few exceptions graduate students have 
participated in social cooperation. Significance of Casual Groups 
133 
A list of 25 social activities, alphabetically 
arrayed was given out with this question: 
In which of the following kinds of effort in 
behalf of miscellaneous individuals or of a 
group, or of a class, or of the general public, 
have you at any time participated with as 
many as ten other persons for a period of 30 
or more days in the aggregate ? 
Go over the list of activities in which you 
have so participated and under each item state 
whether your cooperation has been strictly 
voluntary, or has been with a conscious sense 
also that it was expected of you by your asso- 
ciates or by the community, or because of your 
own desire or sense of duty, and also because it 
has been expected of you. 
Replies by 116 individuals gave the 
following distributions: 
Educational 97 
Religious 90 
For promotion of science, literature, art or 
music 68 
For relief of destitution 44 
For development of social amenities and oppor- 
tunities 37 
For development, reform or safeguarding of 
amusements and recreation 32 
For relief of sick or injured 29 
For prohibition 27 
Distribution of Participants 134 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
For economic betterment of a group, or of a 
class, or of the whole population 27 
For prevention of destitution and pauperism... 25 
For child protection and conservation 24 
For promotion of temperance, but not by pro- 
hibition 24 
For development, or strengthening, or reform of 
family life 23 
For the development or reform of political activ- 
ities or methods 21 
For municipal development or reform 20 
For a more equal distribution of economic pro- 
duct 18 
For better housing 17 
F01 suppression of vice 17 
For prevention or suppression of crime 13 
For the development or reform of government, 
legislat ve or administrative 11 
For better housekeeping 10 
For the promotion of justice 10 
For the development or reform of public or 
private law 8 
For the prevention of cruelty 7 
For the conservation of natural resources 6 
Character of Participation: Number of Instances 
Voluntary 468 
Expected 29 
Voluntary and expected 129 
Undistributed 79 
Societal Cooperation 
Through membership in various organiza- 
tions graduate students with few exceptions 
participate in societal cooperation. Significance of Casual Groups 
135 
Reports by 106 individual members of one 
class showed a distribution of memberships in 
organizations as follows: 
Membership in Organizations 
Members of alumni associations 87 
Members of churches 79 
Members of philanthropic organizations 59 
Members of college fraternities 47 
Members of societies for fostering scholarship. . 35 
Members of societies for fostering literature. . . 25 
Members of societies for fostering science 21 
Members of general fraternities 17 
Voting members of business corporations 17 
Members of societies for fostering art or music 12 
Members of political clubs 11 
Members of granges 3 
Members of trade unions 2 
Probability of Concerted Action 
A considerable number of “same” individ- 
uals is normally found in the membership of 
three or four or more groups, thereby consti- 
tuting a solidarity. The greater the solidarity 
the higher is the probability of concerted ac- 
tion. 
Solidarity 
Of the 106 individuals who reported membership 
in organizations there were citizens of the 
United States 95 
Of the 95 there were born in the United States.. 89 
Of the 89 there were voters 58 136 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Of the 58 there were affiliated with a political 
party 34 
Of the 34 there were Protestants 31 
Of the 31 there were church members 30 
What, now, is the significance of this 
material? What is the significance of casual 
groups ? 
It is coterminous with sociology. 
First. All casual groups present to observa- 
tion a fundamental societal and so 
clearly that there can be no mistaking what 
that fundamental pattern is. 
Always the group is composite, not only in 
the sense that it is made up of individuals, but 
also in the sense that it is composed of kinds or 
categories of individuals. It is never strictly 
homogeneous, and never as heterogeneous as 
theoretically it might be; and the variability 
between these limits is very great. 
The situations to which casual human 
groups respond in behaviour have more often 
been created by man than by physical nature 
for him, whereas the situations to which 
swarms and herds of gregarious animals re- 
spond have in general been more often created 
by physical nature than by their own beha- 
viour, but whether this is true of all species or 
not we need careful studies to determine. Significance of Casual Groups 
137 
In the reactions of casual groups to situa- 
tions a spontaneous and approximately simul- 
taneous multi-individual response is basic, but 
it is complicated by interstimulation and re- 
sponse, particularly by example and imitation. 
A consciousness of kind is always discover- 
able, and usually is obvious. 
Folk-ways and mores are usually in 
evidence, and reactions to them. Social 
interests are manifest, and so are tendencies 
toward concurrent decision and cooperative 
activity. 
Second. The form and action patterns of 
casual human groups are of great variability 
and the variabilities can be measured. Usually 
these groups are too small to serve as adequate 
samples of human society in the large, but the 
measures which they yield are highly sugges- 
tive, and point the way to investigation. 
If by adequate expenditure of time and 
money true samples could be obtained of socie- 
tal factors and behaviour substantially similar 
to the instances that have here been presented, 
and if the measures which they would yield 
should be found to be like these measures and 
proportional to them, what conclusions, or 
general truths of sociology, would appear? For 
the present I content myself with naming 
four. 138 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
1. Group behaviour is determined in part 
by the relative heterogeneity of group com- 
ponents. 
2. The ratio of situations created by man to 
situations created for him, to all of which hu- 
man society reacts, is a measure of societal 
attainment. I do not know that anyone has 
ever proposed to use this ratio as a measure of 
progress. I think that, in the nature of things, 
it is a cultural distance measure (from animal 
to civilized homo sapiens} and that perhaps it 
is the best one that we shall ever get. 
3. The form of a statistical array indicates 
the degree of pressure to make them equal to 
which its items have been subjected. As I 
have elsewhere shown,5 the ratio obtained by 
dividing the difference between the largest 
item and the smallest by the number of items 
is a measure of equalizing or standardizing 
constraint. The greater this ratio, the more 
closely does probability approach certainty 
that chance has been at work: that the phe- 
nomenon which we are studying is largely a 
product of a multiplicity of small causes. The 
smaller the ratio is, the closer does probability 
approach certainty that a specific force has 
been at work to flatten and equalize. Societal 
* “The Service of Statistics to Sociology,” Publications of the American 
Statistical Association, March, 1914, and vide Chapter XII. Significance of Casual Groups 
139 
pressure has been increasing, as everybody 
feels, but it has not yet created an intolerable 
uniformity. A look at the arrays which have 
been presented will satisfy the reader that 
multi-individual behaviour is exceedingly var- 
iable, and that chance still cooperates with 
human purpose. 
4. In human society concurrent decision, as 
our folk-way is, and, in democracies, our law, 
is the agreeing vote of more than half of the 
individuals voting; and, as a rule, a really ef- 
fective cooperation requires the efficient actual 
participation of more than half of the individ- 
uals nominally “standing for” the enterprise. 
Therefore, the possible extent of collective de- 
cision and of effective cooperation in human 
society is measured by the number of matters 
upon which more than one half of all actively 
participant individuals agree. In the foregoing 
distributions more than one half of all group 
units agree upon more items of manners and 
morals than matters of social interest, or ques- 
tions of public policy. The mores are stronger 
than reforms, and, somewhat surprisingly, men 
are in closer agreement upon manners and 
morals than women are. 
A fifth generalization will be presented in 
the next chapter. CHAPTER VIII 
SOCIETAL TELESIS 
The earliest discussion of the nature of 
human society of which we now have record 
is found in the Laws of Plato. Whether it 
occurred actually or only imaginatively, in 
Plato’s head, nobody knows, and it does not 
matter. Either way it states the three possible 
hypotheses: (i) that human society is a divine 
institution and is “run” by the gods for their 
own purposes; (2) that it is artificially created 
by man for his purposes; and (3) that it is a 
natural product of fortuitous factors and im- 
personal processes. The general conclusion at 
which the disputants arrived was that customs 
and laws express an objective conditioning of 
individual and collective life by fortuitous 
forces to which man must accommodate his 
conduct. “The law-making of man they viewed 
as essentially the art of perfecting this accom- 
modation of human conduct to objective facts 
and relations.”1 
With variations this view has persisted for 
more than two thousand years and the varia- 
1 Giddings, Studies in the Theory of Human Society, p. 94. 
140 Societal Telesis 
141 
tions that may be discovered in the writings 
of present-day sociologists do not greatly differ 
in kind or in degree from those which may be 
found in discourses on political theory from 
Aristotle to Rousseau. Montesquieu saw 
human volition controlled by physical condi- 
tions. Comte saw physical conditions altered, 
adapted, and utilized by man through histori- 
cal and political processes. Spencer contended 
that society arises as the culminating product 
of a natural and universal process of evolution, 
in which, however, he found room and function 
for conscious human purpose and cooperative 
effort. This effort he thought most effective 
for good while it remained voluntary and 
plastic. Legislation he distrusted, as likely to 
be more mischievous than useful. 
Lester F. Ward, inspired by Comte, de- 
veloped the large conception that human so- 
ciety in its evolution arrives genetically at a 
point where it becomes intellectually self- 
determining, and thereafter proceeds to work 
knowingly toward the realization of visual- 
ized ends. Accordingly, a telic process deter- 
mined by ends supersedes a merely genetic 
process determined by antecedents. Follow- 
ing Comte’s inaccurate use of the words 
“static” and “dynamic,” Ward misleadingly 
called his first great work Dynamic Sociology. 142 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
A title, “Teleological Sociology,” or an equiva- 
lent, would have been more accurately descrip- 
tive, and would have better focussed attention 
upon Ward’s chief contention.2 
The study of societal phenomena by statis- 
tical methods has now, for those who under- 
stand them, terminated controversy over this 
hoary question of societal self-determination 
by demonstrating that the societal process is 
telic as well as fortuitously and physically 
evolutionistic. 
The demonstration is given in the prevailing 
type of frequency distribution of societal oc- 
currences. These do not plot as the straight 
lines or precise geometric curves of coordinate 
motion, in which there is no room for choice, 
nor yet as the normal frequency curve of 
chance happenings. They plot instead as 
curves of the skew type, indicating not only 
the presence but also the positive influence of 
factors which drive in certain directions to- 
ward recognizable ends. That some of these 
are conscious intents or purposes which drive 
’ More than most writers Ward has suffered at the hands of indiscreet 
and ill-informed disciples who, for their own purposes, have appropriated 
those parts of his system which are demonstrably untrue, in particular his 
Larmarckian biology and his gynecentric anthropology. He deserves a 
better fate. His true generalizations are abundant, substantial and impor- 
tant. Societal Telesis 
143 
toward ends in view (a telic process) is dis- 
tinctly shown in the frequency distribution of 
collective decisions. This is the fifth general- 
ization from such data as were presented in the 
preceding chapter, which was there promised. 
Therefore it is necessary in a comprehensive 
scientific study of human society to scrutinize 
the telic process no less than the synthetic 
co-working of vires a tergo. We must attempt 
to construct the societal teleology. We must 
discover, if we can, what visualized ends are 
alluring enough to call forth effort, and the 
normal succession (if there is one) of alluring 
ends. We must observe the various form and 
action patterns of effort, and how each is re- 
lated to ends in view. Presumably there is a 
development of patterns through trial and 
selection, and therefore a normal succession 
and improvement of methods constituting the 
telic process, and this if possible we must 
ascertain. And to round out the study we 
must inquire how a rational telesis is related 
to a mechanistic evolution. Does conscious 
effort to attain visualized ends truly supersede 
a blind genetic trend, or is telesis but a condi- 
tioned and projected genesis, as genesis is but 
a conditioned and projected drive of equi- 
librating physical energies? 144 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
The few and simple visualized ends which 
move simple, ineffective minds comprise little 
beyond the preservation of life and some 
amelioration of the struggle for existence. To 
more vigourous, but not necessarily more 
intellectual natures, power, and opportunity 
to exercise it, make strong appeal. The ex- 
citements and emotional pleasures incidental 
to social contacts are “life” for multitudes. 
Knowledge, individual development, and race 
improvement, are ends visualized by excep- 
tional men and women in the so-called ad- 
vanced civilizations. There is, therefore, a 
normal gradation, whether or not there is a 
normal succession, of action-provoking ends 
in view. 
Conscious efforts to achieve visualized ends 
are made by individuals, by small social groups 
and sodalities, by societal groups, blocs and 
classes, and by sovereign states. By each of 
these agents effort is directed upon itself and 
upon all agents, namely, individuals, small and 
large groups, sodalities, blocs, classes, and 
sovereign states. By each and all it is directed 
upon conditions deplored but believed to be 
remediable, which are pervasive throughout 
society, and upon conditions which it is desired 
to make pervasive. By each and all it is 
directed also upon status, which has been Societal Telesis 
145 
created by government but is objected to or 
is believed for any reason to call for change. 
This, in bare outline, is the form pattern of 
societal telesis. 
The action pattern, in similar outline, shows 
these features, namely: (i) rude impulsive 
struggle which often becomes violent and rev- 
olutionary, by individuals, groups, blocs, and 
classes; (2) systematic and orderly work, chiefly 
by individuals and small social groups; and 
(3) scientifically planned and systematically 
executed societal engineering. 
The characteristic development of the telic 
process at any given time, and in any desig- 
nated place, is determined by the selected and 
prevailing telic action pattern. The selection 
is determined by mentality, knowledge, and 
circumstance. 
The trend of the telic process is normally 
from rude struggle towards societal engi- 
neering. 
Visualized ends are not fortuitous phenom- 
ena; they are products of the experiences of 
human beings who live and whose forbears 
have lived in society. The methods followed 
and relied on to attain or “realize” ends are 
products of trial and selection worked out 
under past and existing societal conditions. 
Therefore, beyond question, the telic process 146 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
in society is continuous with the genetic. 
Presumably it is a projection of the genetic 
rather than a substitution for it, and cannot 
in even a figurative sense be said to super- 
sede it. 
Remembering that effort for the attainment 
of ends in view is made and brought to bear 
by agents of every societal category, namely, 
individual, group, sodality, bloc, class, and 
sovereign state, it is convenient to scrutinize 
the telic pattern in detail by observing what 
efforts, to realize what ends, are brought to 
bear upon the individuals and component 
groups (families, neighbourhoods, villages, 
cities, and so on) of which human society is 
made up; are brought to bear, further, upon 
the pervasive conditions (sickness, injury, 
illiteracy, ignorance, deficiency and so on); 
and brought to bear, finally, upon status, of 
children, women, the married and divorced, 
the hired, the convicted, the alien, and the 
citizen. Details of method are best observed 
in immediate connection with details of 
pattern. 
There is cross classification here, and rela- 
tions are best indicated in tabular diagrams 
which follow. Societal Telesis 
147 
The Telic Form Pattern 
Effort in 
behalf of 
Individuals 
Families 
Neighbour- 
hoods 
Villages 
Cities 
Sovereign 
States | 
Bearing upon 
Pervasive conditions 
Sickness 
Injury 
Illiteracy 
Ignorance 
Deficiency 
Inadequacy 
Insanity 
Delinquency 
Vice 
Crime 
Unemployment 
Exploitation 
Misery 
Degeneration 
Status of 
Children 
Women 
The married 
and divorced 
The hired 
The convicted 
The alien 
The citizen 148 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
The Telic Action Pattern 
Agent or 
Agency 
Individual 
Social 
Societal 
Governmental 
Method 
Rude 
struggle 
Occasional 
help or 
counsel 
Systematic 
work 
Engineering 
That individuals should put forth effort to 
attain ends which they think worth while to 
themselves, is an occurrence which hardly 
calls for explanation. There is no great mys- 
tery either about instinctive caretaking of off- 
spring by parents, animal or human, or about 
impulsive acts,3 or acts that spring from a 
desire to meddle or dictate. But why, as a 
matter of deliberation, that is to say of reason, 
should one individual exert himself in behalf 
of another? The answers to this question 
which theologians, philosophers, and senti- 
mentalists have offered have been little better 
than side-steppings. They have told us why 
(in the opinion of those who have done the 
* Altruism, along with play and deviltry, is at bottom a discharge of 
superfluous energy. It is an impulsive generosity, overlaid and conditioned 
by ethical reflection, not originating in it. Societal Telesis 
149 
telling) everybody ought to do helpful things 
for and improving things to his fellowman, but 
they have never yet told us why anybody does. 
Such answers as we have to the question of 
fact we get from ethnology and sociology, and 
it is less flattering to human nature than the 
ethical imperative of the philosophers is to 
spiritual conceit. 
When we do things to or for our fellow 
beings not instinctively, or impulsively, or to 
gratify a desire to meddle, but we 
are trying to realize visualized ends. The 
original or primary ends in view when this 
undertaking begins are simple and egoistic. 
They are, first, to make those with whom we 
have contact and dealings, harmless; that is 
to say innocuous; second, to make them un- 
objectionable, at least not obnoxious; and, 
third, to make them not burdensome. 
The savage believes that everybody is liable 
to be infected by an evil mana which is con- 
tagious, or to be “possessed” by a malicious 
spirit, and the primary purpose of initiation 
ordeals, to which youths are subjected, is to 
rid them of contamination and “possession,” 
and magically to make them safe for the future. 
The barbarian, who has arrived at the con- 
ception of deities, watches the attitudes and 
behaviour of both youths and adults whom he 150 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
mercilessly holds to account for acts which 
might bring divine wrath upon the tribe. 
Civilized men wash and vaccinate children, 
vaccinate and otherwise innoculate adults, and 
penalize teachers who inculcate Darwinism. 
Pagan and Christian parents chastise offspring 
for disturbing the domestic peace. Sopho- 
mores haze insufferable freshmen, regiments 
“rag” the raw recruit, and communities, here 
and there, now and then, punish hoodlumism. 
Savages teach youths to take part in the food 
quest, the magical rites, and the common de- 
fense, and relegate boys who cannot or do not 
make good in these activities to the ignominy 
of female attire and life “at home” with the 
women. Crude civilizations inflict cruel punish- 
ments upon vagabondage, begging, loitering 
and loafing. More enlightened civilizations 
undertake to train and stimulate the unambi- 
tious and the ineffective to self-supporting 
activity. 
It is only after these primary ends have been 
pursued a long while that the secondary ends 
which we call “values” are slowly visualized 
and begin to influence conduct. The first re- 
actions to this influence are attempts to make 
individuals of value to the community, di- 
rectly, or as offerings to a god, or as slaves to 
a ruling house or class. War is the first Societal Telesis 
151 
revealer of the immediate value of individuals 
to tribe or nation. Their direct economic value 
begins to receive attention with the rise of 
commerce, and to be acutely visualized under 
competitive industry. A possible intellectual 
value is visualized in high civilizations by the 
few who grasp the importance of discovery and 
invention. Not until late in human evolution 
is there any considerable and earnest attempt 
to make individuals of value to themselves. 
This value is secular and democratic. As a 
concept it cannot arise while mankind believes 
that “the chief end of man is to glorify God,” 
and that the lowly should be content in a 
station in life to which it has pleased the 
quality to call them. It is born of revolt, and 
is nurtured by the idea, sprung from physio- 
logical knowledge, that the object of life is to 
perpetuate itself, that the business of an or- 
ganism is to function, and that the intelligible 
end of rational and reasoning man is to im- 
prove his mental functioning and thereby to 
deepen his joy in life; an improvement which 
presupposes improvement of his physical func- 
tioning and a large acquisition of knowledge. 
Change in character and behaviour which 
is brought about intentionally and by effort 
consists in a physical and mental recondition- 
ing. There are substitutions of new stimuli 152 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
for old and a resulting development of new 
habits. The methods of reconditioning that 
are witnessed in savagery and in the lower 
culture strata of civilization, partake of the 
nature of rude struggle, and at best are random 
experiments in trial and selection. They in- 
volve threats and punishment and appeal to 
fear. Early systematic methods are religious, 
and they are closely followed by military 
disciplines. Systematic secular education, when 
it appears, marks a momentous advance. It is 
attempted when discovery and accumulating 
knowledge have begun to impress imagination 
and to affect judgment. It reacts stimula- 
tively, and presently with irresistible drive 
upon new discovery and a further accumula- 
tion of knowledge. Physiology and psychology 
have now contributed two further methods, 
strictly modern, and of the utmost value. One 
is vocational guidance, a different thing alto- 
gether from vocational training. The other is 
physical and mental hygiene, which conserves 
and draws upon the sources of vigour, health, 
sanity, and poise. It strives to establish cor- 
rect habits, and to awaken a sense of respon- 
sibility, to eliminate groundless fears, to break 
down emotional complexes and obsessions, to 
coordinate behaviour and ideas, and to sub- 
stitute realistic for wishful and fantastic think- Societal Telesis 
153 
ing. These new methods are destined to react 
radically upon the ways and programs of 
systematic education. 
Work upon individuals and for them, re- 
straining, disciplining, and reconditioning 
them, is put forth in personal efforts by un- 
attached individuals, by intimate groups and 
minor associations, by churches, by such so- 
cietal organizations of world-wide extent as 
Boy and Girl Scouts and Young Men’s and 
Young Women’s Associations of various reli- 
gions, and by sovereign states which maintain 
public schools and higher educational institu- 
tions. In all of it there is a varying reliance 
upon individual initiative andresponsibility,on 
the one hand, upon organization, on the other. 
Sporadic action against objectionable fam- 
ilies and helpful effort for them are presumably 
as old as the family itself. Obnoxious families 
are reprimanded, shunned and banned, as 
obnoxious individuals are, and have been since 
days of savagery. The recurring crises of birth 
and death have evoked spontaneous sympathy 
and assistance from kindred and acquaintances. 
“The good neighbour” has always functioned 
now and then. With the rise of priesthoods 
and of landed estates, oversight and assistance 
began to be more systematic. The priest and, 
in Protestant communities, the minister, have 154 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
advised, counselled and restrained. The land- 
lord’s wife and daughter were perhaps the first 
“friendly visitors.” Today we have a secular 
and democratic expansion of these activities, 
and systematic undertakings by societal or- 
ganizations and by states. The work attempted, 
and, in increasing measure achieved, is varied 
and graduated to a degree. It deals with 
emergencies and needs; with housing and other 
living conditions; with habits and morale; 
with opportunities and possibilities. 
Local and civic pride are old. Parish interests 
have long been looked after (in a way) by the 
Christian Church and its missions, but sys- 
tematic effort to improve neighourhoods, vil- 
lages, towns, and cities, is a recent phenomenon. 
The first effective impulse to it was given by 
Arnold Toynbee’s neighbourhood house in 
East London. This impulse was reinforced by 
the University Settlement (men) and by the 
College Settlement (women) in New York. 
Similar centers of neighbourhood influence 
under all manner of auspices have multiplied 
rapidly, until now the count of neighbourhood 
houses in the United States and in England 
has become difficult and uncertain. Their 
activities are varied; but particular attention 
is given to brightening the lives of boys and 
girls, to recreation, to civic responsibility, and Societal Telesis 
155 
to street and other neighbourhood conditions. 
The impulse has spread to rural areas, and an 
intensive study of village and isolated home- 
stead life has taken the name of Rural Soci- 
ology. A drive to stimulate and to organize 
responsibility for the general welfare of the 
populations of large towns and of cities began 
in the United States and in England during 
the great war, and has persisted. It has 
created civic and other community centers. 
It gives promise of large results where it re- 
frains from too much imposing of plans and 
rules, and effectively evokes the self-organizing 
and self-directing power of the citizenry. 
In every sovereign state there are would-be 
states. Every priesthood, every army, every 
landed aristocracy, every trading and manu- 
facturing middle class, every peasantry and 
proletariat, has been a would-be state. Blocs 
of every description, farm blocs, manufact- 
urers and traders blocs, bankers blocs, pro- 
fessional blocs, are incipient or potential 
would-be states. Every would-be state strives 
actively to become sovereign. It initiates and 
foments class struggle. It experiments with 
insurrection and rebellion. When opportunity 
offers it goes on to revolution. At other times 
it falls back upon conspiracy, plotting, agita- 
tion, and the tamer political methods. The 156 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
visualized end of its activity is a dictatorship, 
whether this ugly word is frankly used or 
religiously tabooed. The aim is to organize 
the state, to institute, define and administer 
government, to shape policies. It is the would- 
be state which unceasingly does things to the 
sovereign state. Thus far in history a suc- 
cession of would-be states has done but little 
for the sovereign state, beyond substituting 
limited monarchies and republics for despot- 
isms, and constitutional governments for ab- 
solute ones. 
Spasmodic attack upon prevailing condi- 
tions, evil and reprobated, has recurred 
throughout recorded history. Systematic and 
organized effort to abate them is a character- 
istic phenomenon of modern times. It enlists 
the energies and the financial resources of all 
the agents and agencies of amelioration: in- 
dividual, social, societal, and governmental. 
Rapid and remarkable progress has been made 
in the development of workable plans and 
effective methods. Sickness and the morbidity 
rate are being minimized by sanitation, pre- 
ventive medicine, and the control of epidemics. 
Violent death and disabling injury are found 
to be in large measure preventable by reason- 
able precaution and insistence upon respon- Societal Telesis 
157 
sibility. Illiteracy and ignorance are system- 
atically exposed, and are attacked by private 
agencies and by governments. Deficiency and 
inadequacy of mind and body, only yesterday 
looked upon as almost or quite irremediable, 
are yielding in a measure to advancing knowl- 
edge of causes and aggravating conditions, and 
to scientific treatment. Insanity, once dealt 
with only by brutal restraint and unspeakable 
cruelties, is now scientifically studied, com- 
passionately and scientifically treated, and 
may yet, in many of its forms, be prevented. 
Delinquency has proved to be more baffling. 
Vice in its myriad forms has not been much 
diminished either by direct attack upon de- 
generative habits or by prohibitions of drugs 
and alcohol and questionable amusements. 
Crime has never been more flagrant and defiant 
than it is now in the United States. “Cruel 
and unusual” punishments have been done 
away with, and incarceration has been amelio- 
rated; parole systems have been tried; juvenile 
delinquency has been studied, and hopeful 
experiments to minimize it have been followed 
up; all with little result so far. We await the 
discovery and adoption of effective means of 
crime prevention. 
Of the systematic drive to diminish un- 
employment, exploitation, and misery, the 158 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
story is more heartening. Charity organiza- 
tion societies, societies for improving the con- 
dition of the poor, and other private relief 
agencies, have accomplished much and have 
taught us much, but the burden of big effort 
and expense has been carried by labour organ- 
izations and the tax payer. That by foresight, 
planning, organization, and adjustment to 
economic cycles, unemployment can greatly be 
diminished has been demonstrated. Legisla- 
tion has contributed something toward the 
minimizing of exploitation, but the sheer 
power of organized labour has curbed it. An 
exception must be made in the case of child 
labour exploitation, which can be stopped only 
by legislation, and will be. The diminution of 
economic misery, also, requires the cooperation 
of private effort with legislation. Insurance 
and old age pensions have proven their value. 
Very recently indeed, the problem of the 
possible degeneration of an entire population 
has begun to receive sober attention, and sys- 
tematic effort to study and to deal with it 
preventively has made a surprising start. 
A demand has arisen, and the American Con- 
gress has listened to it, that the unrestricted 
immigration of all sorts and conditions of men 
shall cease, and that such immigrants as we 
receive shall be selected as to both stock and Societal Telesis 
159 
individual character. Miscegenation of white 
and black has been made unlawful in many 
states without, however, preventing amalga- 
mation; and notwithstanding fifty years of 
public and private effort to ameliorate them, 
the relations of white and coloured races in the 
United States have never been more perplex- 
ing than they are now. The desirability and 
the possibility of assimilation (always to be 
distinguished from amalgamation) of the native 
and foreign born elements of our population 
came sharply to attention with our participa- 
tion in the European war. There has been 
legislation against the teaching of foreign 
languages in the schools and against a foreign 
language press, but some of it has been re- 
pealed. Religious prejudice, which has a way 
of flaring up and dying down, has of late been 
unfortunately strong. The more hopeful efforts 
are along the lines of a strictly secular educa- 
tion and attention to morale. 
Birth control and eugenics are in the con- 
troversial stage. 
• 
Since the memory of man ran not to the 
contrary status, created and bulwarked by 
law, has irritated. It has often provoked re- 
bellion, which, more than once has run into 
revolution. Violence more than once has 160 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
destroyed status. It survives, nevertheless, 
and perhaps always will, but in modern democ- 
cracies probably in minor forms. Essentially 
it consists of legal differences and inequali- 
ties. 
The conditions of status with which social 
and societal effort and the programs of would- 
be states are now normally concerned are 
those affecting children, women, the married 
and the divorced, the hired (wage earners), the 
convicted (misdemeanants and felons), aliens 
and enfranchised citizens. 
Children remain subject to parental author- 
ity, and probably will, but that authority has 
been limited and restrained. The state no 
longer hesitates to remove the child from 
parental custody for cruelty or neglect. In 
America and in Great Britain most of the an- 
cient disabilities of women, in particular of 
married women, have been done away with. 
Women can own property and make contracts 
in their own name and right. They can enter 
practically all occupations and professions. 
They can have legal custody of their children, 
if the court so orders, after divorce, and under 
various other circumstances. They can vote. 
The rightful and expedient status of the ille- 
gitimate child and of the unmarried mother 
is yet, however, a matter of controversy. Societal Telesis 
161 
Civil marriage prevails in Western Europe, 
throughout the British Empire, and in the 
United States, but the sacramental concep- 
tion of marriage is yet held strongly enough 
by influential groups, and by such powerful 
organizations as the Catholic and Episcopal 
Churches, to complicate the question of di- 
vorce. Throughout these regions divorce has 
been made easier, and divorces have multi- 
plied, but the question whether divorce law 
should be made yet more liberal, or, on the 
contrary, less so, is highly controversial. In 
almost every conceivable way the status of 
the wage-earner has been ameliorated. It is 
no longer conspiracy to organize and belong 
to a trade union. Subject to restraints as to 
violence and interference with third parties, 
or with the public interest, upon which the 
courts insist, the hired workman can par- 
ticipate in a strike or a boycott, and can do 
picket duty. The convicted misdemeanant and 
the felon have been accorded certain rights, 
none so fundamental, however, as the right 
of habeas long ago won. They can, 
however, more easily appeal than formerly, 
and, on evidence, have their cases reopened. 
They are permitted also many privileges. 
Whether all of these are expedient, is a con- 
troversial question. 162 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
The alien is subject to deportation for cause, 
but from the moment that he takes out his 
first naturalization papers his status for most 
purposes is that of a citizen. At all times he 
has rights of property and of contract. Prac- 
tically he has the same rights of marriage that 
citizens have. 
That the status of the enfranchised citizen 
of a republic, which, we supposed, was estab- 
lished for all time after the American and 
French Revolutions, has now become a matter 
of serious concern, is a suggestion likely to be 
startling to many readers. It is only necessary, 
however, to review the legislation of recent 
years, in America particularly, to discover that 
a momentous reaction is under way. In count- 
less particulars personal liberty has been cur- 
tailed. Prohibitions and censorships of every 
imaginable description have multiplied. How 
far the movement will go no one probably is 
prescient enough to predict; but what the 
result will be, if it continues, the sociologist 
who knows his data cannot doubt. In the 
Middle Ages the status of a majority of all 
persons was that of villeinage. The vil- 
lein could do nothing, beyond certain custo- 
mary things, without his lord’s permission. He 
could not leave his strip of land, and until long 
after the break-up of the manorial system he Societal Telesis 
163 
could not so much as leave his parish in search 
of work without authorization. He could not 
chose a wife without his lord’s approval. He 
could not buy or sell except in authorized local 
markets and under stringent rules. At every 
turn his life was confronted by “Thou shalt 
not.” That the free citizens of a democratic 
state could ever, voluntarily and deliberately, 
impose like bondage upon themselves, would 
once have been unthinkable. But in America 
we are doing it. It is becoming impossible to 
engage in business or to conduct it without 
authority, extending to details; to engage in 
uncensored recreations, to see uncensored 
plays or pictures, to read uncensored books, 
to have children taught uncensored science, to 
go on the beach in other than “permitted” 
costumes, or to serve any but “legal” foods 
and drinks upon our tables. Whether this 
movement, to which apparently we are com- 
mitted, is expedient or will work for ill, is a 
question that need not here be discussed. I 
am pointing out only the sociological fact that, 
wisely or unwisely, as the case may be, we are 
creating for ourselves and imposing upon our- 
selves, a status of legal villeinage. 
Personal work in behalf of individuals, fami- 
lies, and neighbourhoods has become profes- 164 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
sionalized, a fact which plainly shows how 
technical as well as how earnest and how de- 
tailed this activity now is. The name, “social 
work,” which has been given to this profession 
is descriptive. The practice of social work 
comprises encouragement, instruction and 
counsel, many kinds of first aid in accident, 
illness, mental difficulty, and economic distress 
and much exploitation for worthy ends of hu- 
man resources within immediate reach; but 
essentially and chiefly it consists in making 
and breaking social contacts. The assumption 
from which it starts is that helpful social con- 
tacts are not only a broadening of opportunity 
but also a major and effective influence in re- 
conditioning interests and habits, while con- 
sortings with vicious and criminal companions 
are, all in all, the most evil of known influences 
upon character and conduct. The social 
worker systematically makes social contacts for 
herself or himself not only by taking advantage 
of introductions and chance acquaintanceships, 
and of opportunities for first aid or instruction, 
but also through participation in local interests 
and activities, including, often, participation 
in wage earning industry. The successful social 
worker is by nature considerate, tactful, and 
resourceful. By training he or she should be 
grounded in physiology, social psychology, so- Societal Telesis 
165 
ciology, and economics, and have become com- 
petent to give information and counsel and to 
render all the kinds of first aid that have been 
named. By sympathy and experience he or 
she should have become able to understand, 
to value, and to fit into the circumstances and 
the folk-ways of the neighbourhood. 
Another and more ambitious profession of 
societal telesis is in view, but hardly yet estab- 
lished. It has been thought and talked about 
enough to have acquired a name, to wit, socie- 
tal or human engineering. A world full of 
nations crippled and exhausted by a devastat- 
ing war is grim evidence of our need of it. 
It has been needed, in fact, since civilization 
arose. Much of what Mr. Spencer said fifty 
years ago in the first chapter of The Study of 
Sociology, “Our Need of It,” can profitably be 
read now as a statement of our need of societal 
engineering. 
Engineering of any description, civil or mili- 
tary, mechanical, chemical, or electrical, eco- 
logical or societal, is an acceptance of scientific 
principles as the basis of practice, and a follow- 
ing of technical methods of applying them. It 
is hard and expensive work. Imagination has 
place in it, but wishful thinking has not. The 
engineer studies the situation with which he is 
expected to deal before he meddles with it, and 166 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
the feasibility of the thing which it is proposed 
to do before he begins operations. He acquaints 
himself with the nature and potentialities of 
the materials and energies, activities and capa- 
bilities, to be worked on and with. With all 
possible precision he estimates costs, including 
costs of rights to be acquired, and of liabilities, 
claims, and damages to be met. Then he deter- 
mines upon a method to be followed and works 
out the details of operations and procedures. 
Finally he reduces the whole undertaking to 
working plans and specifications. 
It is hardly necessary to insist that the engi- 
neering way has not been followed extensively 
in social reform, class struggle, public policy, 
or legislation. 
The present human situation which calls for 
ameliorative engineering comprises both bad 
heredity and bad environment with resulting 
physical and mental inadequacy, accident, ill- 
ness, exhaustion, fear, ignorance and perver- 
sity, inadequate organization of relations, inef- 
fective applications of effort, injustice and 
exploitation, poverty, misery, hatred, and 
war. 
The feasibility of projects of amelioration 
receives little enough consideration from un- 
trained and unchastened uplifters, and none 
whatever from our phosphorescent ignorati of Societal Telesis 
167 
revolt and revolutionism. The engineer knows 
that feasibility is limited and is grimly con- 
ditioned by human constitutions, nerves, and 
energies, and by the costs which must be met 
out of finite incomes. 
The engineer who works with physical ma- 
terials and energies knows that he must bear in 
mind their properties, the uses to which they are 
adapted, their limits of resistance, the types of 
motion, coordinate, turbulent,or radiant, which 
they exemplify; and, not least important, the 
spill and waste of energy when it is converted 
from one mode into another. Human engi- 
neering calls for like knowledge, and, above all, 
for recognition that there are loads which hu- 
man nerves and muscles can no more carry, 
and shocks which they can no more endure, 
than steel girders or concrete arches can with- 
stand unlimited strain. Least of all can they 
hold out under relentless speeding up. The 
mechanical engineer knows that something 
will happen if he runs a grindstone or a soft 
iron rim as many revolutions a second as he 
can run a high-grade steel fly wheel; but not a 
few of our self-constituted advisors in general 
to mankind are preaching the delusion that 
backward races and slum populations can be 
speeded up to any velocity if they are given a 
few turns in the educational lathe, sand- 168 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
papered and washed, and geared to the peoples 
that have been tempered in fires of adversity 
and rolled in the mills of destiny for ten thou- 
sand years. 
It seems almost childish to say in so many 
words that it is the limitation of human ener- 
gies which always raises the question of costs 
and compels us to decide whether we should 
devote our resources to this cause or to that, 
in the certainty that we can not devote them to 
this cause and to that. But the number of 
seemingly intelligent persons who are as in- 
capable of seeing this elementary fact of eco- 
nomics, as a colour-blind man is of seeing a red 
lantern, is legion. They imagine and talk about 
a “social surplus” which is always growing, and 
upon which we can draw whatever amounts we 
need by filling in blank checks that God in His 
goodness has signed in advance. Driven to 
explain, they say that a combination of dis- 
covery, invention, and organization promises 
an indefinite increase of production, forgetting 
that each of these wonder-workers is not a 
talisman, but is an expenditure of energy. Hap- 
pily there is, or can be, such a thing as surplus, 
but it is finite, and it is obtained only in the 
way in which the brothers in the fable obtained 
the treasure which their father had hidden for 
them in the garden. Societal Telesis 
169 
The proximate means which societal engi- 
neering can make use of, are identical with 
those which amateur effort has experimented 
with. They are: religious (energy releasing), 
educational, economic, legislative, and govern- 
mental activities. Back of them all is an ulti- 
mate procedure or fundamental method. This 
is equilibration, a balancing of resources and 
energies, processes and forms. It is identical 
with the method (or process) which we dis- 
cover in physical and in biological evolution. 
Arrived at the fact last named, that the fun- 
damental method of societal engineering is 
identical with the process of natural evolution, 
we have come back to the starting point from 
which our study of societal telesis proceeded; 
but now with abundant proof obtained that 
the telic process in human society does not, in 
any reasonable meaning of the word, supersede 
the genetic process. It is a projection and con- 
ditioning of the genetic process. Not only is 
the method or process of the one essentially 
identical with the method and process of the 
other, but also the causes and effects of the 
one are identical with the causes and effects of 
the other. To be more meticulously precise 
(since the importance of the topic perhaps jus- 
tifies precision) the telic activity of socially 170 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
organized man is an effect of the efficient causes 
at work in societal genesis, and the visualized 
ends, or final causes, of the telic process are 
broadly identical with the inevitable or natural 
consequences of the genetic process. 
A perfect example of the identity of a telic 
process with the effect of natural societal causa- 
tion is seen in the evolution of legal villeinage. 
Society is a product of pressures, physical, bio- 
logical, and circumstantial. Legal villeinage is 
a product of purpose—of concerted volition— 
but back of volition are the circumstantial 
pressures arising out of increasing population, 
the modern mobility of population, the hetero- 
geneity of modern peoples, the complexity of 
the societal order, and the speeding up of life. 
The villeins of feudal days became villeins by 
“commending” themselves to their lords in ex- 
change for protection. They surrendered their 
freedom and sought protection to escape from 
perils and miseries more unbearable than vil- 
leinage. Modern populations have created legal 
villeinage and imposed it upon themselves in 
the belief that thereby they find protection 
against aggressions and disorders created by 
antisocial and non-socialized elements that are 
more unbearable than restraints of liberty. 
The visualized ends of telic activity in 
human society and by it are: Amelioration of Societal Telesis 
171 
the human lot, by security and material abun- 
dance; the survival (which security and 
abundance make possible) of variates from a 
standardized human type in whom lie our hope 
of discovery, of invention, and of experimen- 
tation; the socialization of entire populations, 
with elimination of the antisocial; and that 
individuation which is an evolution of intelli- 
gent, responsible, self-determining personality 
—of adequate man. And these ends, for which 
we strive, we have perceived and found desir- 
able, because a societal evolution which we 
did not plan produced us, produced them, and 
enabled us to see them! CHAPTER IX 
THE VALIDITY OF INFERENCE FROM SOCIETAL 
EXPERIMENTATION 
Any attempt to ameliorate or to improve 
human life by achieving visualized ends is an 
experiment. The scientific difference between 
experiment as it is conducted in a physical or 
a chemical laboratory, and experiment in, on, 
or by human society, was explained in Chapter 
TIL When an experiment is completely and 
correctly controlled no question of the validity 
of a logical inference from it, or about its 
results, can be raised. If perfect control is 
impossible, the validity of every inference from 
an experiment or about its apparent results 
must be determined, if such a thing is possible, 
by accredited scientific procedures. 
Is it possible? John Stuart Mill in his System 
of Logic, published in 1843, to all intents and 
purposes said “No,” and argued that a science 
of society must be deductive in form and 
method. Finding no sufficient premises other 
than conscious motives, selfish or benevolent, 
from which to deduce human behaviour, Mill 
172 Inference from Experimentation 
173 
saw the possibility of only two social sciences, 
namely, political economy and ethology, the 
latter a science of character and conduct. This 
view of the matter, fatal, if true, to sociology, 
has given aid and comfort to two generations 
of economists, and has buttressed an assump- 
tion against which sociology has had to con- 
tend (to its own great advantage, however,) 
that political economy, if not the only true 
science of human interests and affairs, is at 
least more scientific than sociology is or can be. 
As it happened, Mill’s answer was wrong, 
and it is probable that he himself would have 
seen that it was wrong if by chance he had 
become well acquainted with the statistical 
investigations which Jacques Adolf Lambert 
Quetelet had been publishing in rapid succes- 
sion since 1830, although the theoretical impli- 
cations of these were not developed by Quete- 
let until 1846 when he published his treatise, 
Sur la theorie des probabilites appliquees aux 
sciences morales et politiques. Quetelet’s work 
obtained recognition slowly, and even now the 
social sciences are by no means fully awake to 
its significance. They cling to Mill’s unfor- 
tunate fallacy. To understand the logic and 
to use the methods of statistics takes brain 
work of another kind, rather than of another 
intensity or amount, from that which is deduc- 174 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
tively creative, and education for the statisti- 
cal way of thinking has made slow progress. 
These remarks are possibly by the way. What 
immediately concerns us now is that the valid- 
ity of inference from any kind of experimenta- 
tion, from the roughest trial and error, to 
experimentation that is almost controlled (as 
some of our industrial and commercial experi- 
mentation is), can be determined. The assump- 
tions and the methods have been worked out 
and are known. 
We have first the irrefutable assumption, 
long denied by bewildered philosophers, but 
none the less undeniable, that the validity of 
an induction differs in no way, qualitatively or 
quantitatively from the validity of a deduction. 
The content (or detail) of infinity is unknow- 
able, and, conversely, all that is knowable is 
finite. Therefore, we cannot say with certainty 
what may happen one day in a series of happen- 
ings which is theoretically infinite. The sun has 
“risen” many times without missing a date, 
but we cannot possibly know with certainty 
that it will “rise” tomorrow. Therefore, all 
that induction can give us is presumption or 
probability. But, also, this is all that deduction 
can give us. The certainty which deduction 
seems to give us is hypothetical only. If the 
premise is true and the logic impeccable, the Inference from Experimentation 
175 
conclusion is true. And since we can know 
nothing of the content of infinity, any premise 
which assumes a content of it is invalid, except 
for hypothetical purposes. The only premises 
which we can use in the quest of finite knowl- 
edge are empirical facts arrived at inductively. 
What, then, is presumption or probability, 
the sum and substance of concrete finite assur- 
ance? It is nothing more nor less than, or in 
any way different from, a relative frequency of 
occurrence (a ratio of occurrence to non-occur- 
rence) of something or other within a finite 
field of occurrences. Or, more briefly, presump- 
tion (in distinction from a merely hypothetical 
certainty) is a ratio. 
In everyday discussion we do not observe 
these philosophical niceties; we have no need 
to. For practical purposes we say that a pos- 
sible occurrence which always does occur will 
occur certainly, and that an occurrence which 
occurs usually, but not always, is presumptive 
or probable. Through controlled experimen- 
tation we arrive at knowledge of one and 
another invariable, (or, as we say, certain) 
occurrence. Through uncontrolled experimen- 
tation, and valid inference from it, we can 
arrive at knowledge of probable occurrence. 
We often say that our ultimate proof of the 
validity of anjnference from uncontrolled ex- 176 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
perimentation is the survival of something or 
other, or of somebody or other. But this proof, 
for which it may be necessary to wait while 
generations come and go, is after all a presump- 
tion. Human society reveres a thousand ta- 
boos, commands, and institutions, products 
of prolonged experimentation, which are held 
to be useful or even necessary. Yet, every now 
and then, an idol is broken or scrapped, and 
no harm follows. 
Therefore we need, if we Can find it, a way 
of determining now, and with the highest at- 
tainable approximation to certitude, the va- 
lidity of our inferences from uncontrolled 
societal experimentation. 
There are methods. They are fairly simple; 
and every scientific student of society should 
give heed to them, and learn to use them. 
The first procedure is to delimit the field 
within which the societal experimentation in 
question has been going on or is proceeding. 
The facts enumerated must all be taken from 
within this field. The delimitation may be 
regional, temporal, or categorical. If it can be 
delimited in all three ways that is best. 
For example, let it be desired to know if 
legal requirements of school attendance do in 
fact curtail child labour in mills, or mines, or 
street occupations. The data should be Inference from Experimentation 
177 
obtained from within a defined area, for a 
specified period, and for specified occupations, 
and they should be as nearly comprehensive as 
possible. 
This precaution having been observed, we 
can do one or another of four more things and 
perhaps all of them; the more the better. 
First, remembering the significance of skewed 
distributions of numerical data, we can com- 
pare the distributions of the facts we have 
gathered within the given area as they appear 
before the introduction of an experimental 
factor and after it. If there is an unmistakable 
and considerable increase or decrease of skew, 
or a considerable change in its form, we have 
strong presumptive evidence that a new cause 
has been at work. It remains, however, to 
ascertain, if we can, whether the new cause can 
be identified with the experimental factor which 
we are observing. 
In the second place, remembering that all 
probability is a ratio, we can ask whether our 
experimental factor is of appreciable or impres- 
sive magnitude by comparison with the magni- 
tude of changes attributed to it. The ox is a 
sturdy beast, but he can’t draw a gang plow. 
If, to return to our example, a school atten- 
dance law has lengthened required attendance 
by only two or three weeks a year it presum- 178 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
ably has not cut down the number of mill 
workers under fourteen years of age by twelve 
or fifteen percent. A few feeble trade unions 
could not tie up industry and commerce by a 
general strike, but a nation-wide organization 
of wage earners might, and it might be the 
only cause of sufficient magnitude at a given 
moment to do so. A third party mustering a 
few hundred thousand votes could not decide 
a national election or its issues unless the 
dominant parties were of almost equal 
strength, but a third party commanding many 
millions of votes might dictate terms. 
A third thing that we can do to check the 
validity of an inference drawn from societal 
experimentation, if we have obtained adequate 
data is to compare our ratios with the arithme- 
tic of chance. For this purpose we must have 
an approximately complete listing of occur- 
rences of societal phenomena of a given kind or 
of given kinds, into which the experimental 
factor under observation has been intruded, 
and of occurrences of phenomena of the same 
kind or kinds from which it has been absent. 
Then, if in more than fifty percent of all occur- 
rences the experimental factor has been present, 
there is a reasonable presumption that it has 
been an effective cause of change, and the 
probability increases with the percentage. The Inference from Experimentation 
179 
probability that one or the other of two alter- 
native possibilities will occur by pure chance 
is fifty-fifty, as everybody knows. The prob- 
ability of occurrence of each of a larger number 
of possibilities is proportional to the number 
of possible occurrences of each. If you draw 
twenty cards from a pack and fifteen of them 
are red, you may reasonably infer that the pack 
has not been well shuffled. If you discover that 
three-fourths or more of all states in which 
child labour is yielding to school attendance 
have laws restrictive of the one and mandatory 
of the other, you may reasonably infer that the 
legislature has in this instance been more potent 
than the alleged “humane sensibilities of our 
Christian communities.” 
Finally, we may measure correlations.1 This 
is a precise way of determining degree of coin- 
cidence, concurrence, or association of 
phenomena that can be numerically expressed 
in arrays of counts or measures. If, in a large 
number of cases, we find a high correlation of 
the occurrence frequencies of our experimental 
factor with the occurrence frequencies of the 
result attributed to it, the presumption of causal 
nexus is strong. For example, the inverse 
occurrence of cases of small pox with occurrence 
of vaccination is too manifestly revealed and 
1 Vide infra Chapter XII. 180 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
precisely measured by a high correlation coeffi- 
cient unmatched by any other within the field 
of small pox phenomena to leave reasonable 
doubt that vaccination more than any other 
cause has diminished the ravages of small pox; 
and we have like proof that innoculation has 
brought typhoid fever under control. This 
proof is not as dramatic, but it is as substan- 
tial, as the experimental proof that certain 
mosquitoes are the carriers of malaria and of 
yellow fever. 
The statistician must, it is true, watch his 
steps when reasoning from correlation. There 
is always the possibility that a given correla- 
tion is a mere arithmetical accident. If it is 
not in this sense “spurious” a correlation may 
point to a common cause of the phenomena 
exhibited in the arrays of frequencies. Or, a 
third possibility, two correlated arrays may 
truly indicate, the one, cause, the other, ef- 
fect, without revealing which is which. If, 
however, we can measure a multiplicity of cor- 
relations we can assign relative effectiveness to 
each of a considerable number of cooperating 
factors. The logical points to be remembered 
are, one, that the highest correlation points to 
the major causal nexus; and two, that if in a 
given combination of factors one factor, as- 
sumed to be a cause, and another factor, Inference from Experimentation 
181 
assumed to be an effect, persist in correlation 
while other factors and correlations come and 
go, the persisting factors are beyond doubt 
major cause and major effect, the other factors 
being only conditioning influences. These 
points are the essentials of the logic of con- 
comitant variation, stated more precisely than 
Mill stated it. 
It is by the application of these procedures 
to relevant and adequate data that we may 
hope in time to build up a scientific criticism 
of the enormous mass of loose inferences which 
we now encounter relative to the consequences 
of countless societal experiments which, in 
modern democracies, are being made in every 
realm of human effort. CHAPTER X 
EXPLORATION AND SURVEY 
A scientific scrutiny of facts and a scientific 
interpretation of relations are not complete 
until we have asked the question, as old 
as human apprehension and desire, as old as 
curiosity, What else? What else is, or happens? 
What else was, or happened? What else will be, 
or will happen? 
Yet so indolent are we, and so swayed by 
wishful thinking, that we do not always con- 
scientiously ask these questions when seeking 
knowledge or attempting to achieve visualized 
ends. In societal telesis there has been incal- 
culable waste of effort and of resources through 
failure to ask one of these questions in particu- 
lar, namely, What else probably will happen 
when we bring about, or try to bring about, a 
change that we have in view, and believe to be 
desirable? This neglect is the characteristic 
vice of legislation. 
Exploration and survey are systematic 
methods of trying to discover “what else.” 
The primary meaning of the verb “to ex- 
plore” andp/oro) is to call out or to cry out 
182 Exploration and Survey 
183 
into uncertainty, not to a person in view or for 
help in sight. It connotes the missing, the un- 
seen, the possible; and probably from the 
earliest days first attempts toward systematic 
exploration have consisted in random ques- 
tionings and observations. Questionings have 
been addressed to travelers returned from dis- 
tant parts, and to other persons who have had 
unusual opportunities or experiences. Obser- 
vations have been made by the way in the 
course of wanderings “to find out.” Then have 
come reconnaissances. Invaders have sent re- 
sourceful scouts “to spy out the land.” 
Out of these beginnings have been developed 
explorations which are orderly to a degree. The 
mining engineer improves upon the ways of 
the prospector by running drifts, in one and 
another direction, through ore-bearing strata, 
to discover veins and pockets rich enough to 
pay for working. The archeologist sinks shafts 
and trenches to the bottom of successive ac- 
cumulations of human handiwork, ages ago 
abandoned. The social and societal explorer, 
after visiting, touring, slumming, and inter- 
viewing, resorts to questionnaires and films 
which can be checked up. 
Exploration at its best is a careful sampling 
of a field, regional, temporal, dynamic, or what 
you will. The survey is a larger undertaking. 184 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
It is a comprehensive examination of afield,a 
combination and total of explorations. It com- 
prises observations, enumerations, measure- 
ments, and precise determinations of metes 
and bounds. 
Surveys are of two fundamental types. One 
is the pattern survey, the other is the vari- 
ability survey. The pattern survey maps and 
graphs form and action patterns, as they ap- 
pear at a given moment. The variability sur- 
vey records changes in form and action patterns 
from time to time occurring, and, also, should 
if possible record changes in rates and ratios 
of change. The variability survey presupposes 
pattern surveys, repeated at constant intervals. 
A pattern survey, if adequate and accurate, 
may have large value because of its disclosures 
of unsuspected resources, opportunities, and 
relationships, and, as well, of unsuspected 
dangers, liabilities, wrongs, and other things 
objectionable. When these matters have been 
established and have become familiar knowl- 
edge the question of the worth-whileness of 
repeating the survey occasionally, or regularly 
at intervals of equal length, turns upon the 
value of a variability survey, and this involves 
questions of cost. 
These considerations are of prime impor- 
tance as they bear upon social and societal Exploration and Survey 
185 
surveys, to which now we may turn atten- 
tion. 
Social and societal surveying has been a fad 
and an industry. It is becoming a scientific 
enterprise, of improving quality. It is begin- 
ning to give us trustworthy and significant 
information. 
The best surveys of human interests hitherto 
have been of limited scope. They have been 
specifically religious, educational, commercial, 
or industrial, or specifically surveys of living 
conditions, working conditions, family incomes 
and family budgets. Comprehensive surveys 
of entire communities have not been numerous, 
and with such outstanding exceptions as 
Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People 
of London, in England, and the Pittsburgh 
and Springfield surveys in America, have not 
been notoriously excellent. 
It is now and then in courtesy, but usually 
it is in ignorance, that such surveys as have 
been made are described as “social,” “so- 
cietal,” or “community” surveys. The socio- 
logical data and suggestions which they offer 
us are meagre. The religious surveys are ninety 
percent or more religious. The educational 
surveys are ninety-five percent technically 
educational. The trade and industrial surveys 
are ninety-nine percent technically economic. 186 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Even the surveys of living conditions, working 
conditions, family incomes and family budgets, 
which would be better worth-while if, without 
being less economic, they were more socio- 
logical, have so far contributed little to social 
or societal psychology, to our knowledge of 
folk-ways, or of cultural conflicts, or to our 
understanding of the variability of leadership, 
of organization, or of status. 
A survey that could properly be described 
as social and societal would discover, record, 
map, and graph phenomena that are social or 
societal in a strict instead of in a loose meaning 
of the words. It would ascertain and disclose 
prevailing, unusual, and peculiar stimulations 
and responses, exhibited in multi-individual 
behaviour; habits of association and of co- 
activity, especially the variate forms; common 
excitements and uncommon outbreaks, and 
their causes; persisting folk-ways, changing 
ones, and new ones; controversies and delibera- 
tions; cultural conflicts; group and class strug- 
gles; variate forms of leadership and of organ- 
ization; social work and societal engineering; 
status and its variability; the variability of 
coercion, including intimidation and bullying; 
the variability of liberty, and the clash of 
liberty with coercion; the variability of such 
ameliorations of life as security and abundance; Exploration and Survey 
187 
the variability of viable departures from type; 
the variability of socialization, as shown by 
the kinds and amounts of prevailing vice and 
crime; and the variability of individuation, 
and of adequacy. 
A true social and societal survey, comprising 
these essentials, is as yet a possibility only. 
I have never yet seen one, and I have never 
yet been able to persuade a student of soci- 
ology to undertake one. 
And, as might be expected, I do not know 
of any comprehensive sociological survey of a 
community. The best approximation to one 
that I am acquainted with is Professor James 
M. Williams’ study, An American Town. Such 
a survey would comprise all of the foregoing 
matters, and by way of background, a de- 
tailed and trustworthy account of the origins 
and historical evolution of the community; of 
the peculiarities of the inhabitants, generation 
by generation; of the regional influences and 
circumstantial pressures that have borne upon 
them, selecting and conditioning them; of 
the resulting heterogeneity or homogeneity of 
physical and of mental type, and the conse- 
quent mental and moral levels. 
A community survey may take for its field 
a village, a town, a city, a county, a state, a 
region or section, or a nation. It will be long 188 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
before we shall have detailed community sur- 
veys of wide extent. We could have village 
surveys made by individuals or private or- 
ganizations, and it is to be hoped that the 
rural sociologists will undertake them. State 
and national surveys must be public enter- 
prises. The United States Census, with all its 
shortcomings and imperfections, is the most 
important undertaking by way of general so- 
cietal survey that has yet been attempted. CHAPTER XI 
THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIETAL ENERGIES 
AND TRENDS 
A true and complete description of anything 
must include measurements of it. Even identi- 
fication of it may turn on dimensions. A mem- 
orandum on a police blotter would hardly 
identify a suspect if it recorded only such 
qualitative facts as colour of eyes and hair, 
omitting to mention height or weight, not to 
speak of lesser items of the Bertillon scheme. 
There has been a good deal of unprecise talk 
among sociologists and social workers about 
“social forces.” For quacks and amateurs the 
phrase is charged with mana. It creates an 
illusion of knowledge at command which sus- 
pends intellectual animation, and may end in 
mental coma. To scientific inquirers able to 
keep their heads it offers possibilities not yet 
exploited. 
Social energies there are; obvious in manifes- 
tation or detected by accident, subtle in work- 
ing or terrific in explosion, and so far known; 
but they are not yet brought within scientific 
189 190 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
description, certainly not within the quanti- 
tative formulation characteristic of our famil- 
iar descriptions of thermo-dynamic, chemical, 
and electro-magnetic energies. Therefore, they 
are not always correctly identified and classi- 
fied. Not all of them in strict parlance are 
“forces,” namely, coordinate motions. Most 
of them are turbulences, like chemical energies 
and heat.1 
The lists of social energies that we now and 
then encounter in books, are impressive for 
other reasons than scientific value. To cite an 
item that recurs in more than one of them, 
many list-makers following Ward, name ap- 
petites and desires among primordial social en- 
ergies. So they are, if all one means is that 
they are relatively elemental factors of social 
situations and happenings; but so also, in this 
sense, are gravitation and the precession of the 
equinoxes; and neither the one pair of energies 
nor the other offers us a hint as to the nature of 
society, its origin, or what it is likely to do 
next. The sociologist, casting about for a 
working hypothesis, would be in better luck 
if his intuition turned to—well, let us say, the 
group-assembling power of eclipses or of me- 
dicinal springs. 
1 Vide ante pp. 6, 7 and cf. Giddings, Studies in the Theory of Human 
Society, pp. 135. Measurement of Energies 
191 
In measuring anything, tangible or intan- 
gible, it is necessary to remember that the 
measuring process begins with counting items 
or units, and that all subsequent procedures 
are statistical operations. Measuring instru- 
ments are either (i) devices for precise de- 
limitation of the units to be counted, or (2) 
devices for counting many units at once, as 
when we count twelve inches at a time by 
means of a foot rule or sixteen ounces at a 
time by means of a pound weight, or (3) de- 
vices for giving us ratios, the slide rule for 
example. 
In measuring energies it is necessary to re- 
member that it is impossible to measure them 
directly. We can measure them only in terms 
of what they do. For example, the kinetic 
energy of water falling from a height through 
a turbine; of an uncoiling spring; of super- 
heated steam back of a piston head; of an 
electric current; is measured by the number of 
pounds it can lift one foot in one second, or by 
any equivalent “work.” The intellectual or 
moral energy of a man is measurable to the 
extent, and only to the extent, that he “does 
things” which can be described in terms of 
units of accomplishment. 
Furthermore, “work,” “accomplishment,” 
“something done,” is always resolvable into 192 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
one or the other of two concrete things, or into 
a combination of the two. These two things 
are: (i) a modification or a transformation of a 
condition or of conditions, as for example, the 
draining of a bog, the repairing of a house, the 
washing of a boy’s face; (2) “starting some- 
thing,” “keeping something going,” stimulat- 
ing behaviour and maintaining it, in short, 
“carrying on.” To the extent, and only to the 
extent, that these concretes can be resolved 
into units that can be discriminated, identified, 
delimited and counted, “work” can be meas- 
ured. 
Finally, measurements can be “checked up” 
in various ways. Three of them are important, 
and where all can be used, the measurement is 
approximately verifiable. 
The first way is given us in the fact that all 
energies known to man, whether they are of 
the group that we call physical, or of the group 
that we call moral, are identified with concrete 
material bodies which store and carry them; 
and their possibilities of manifestation in ki- 
netic energy, capable of doing work, are 
roughly proportional to such facts as the size, 
weight, number, composition, known qualities, 
and position, of the carriers. If, therefore, a 
smoking-car acquaintance tells you that half a 
ton of coal, thrown into the fire-box of a ninety Measurement of Energies 
193 
ton locomotive, once pulled one hundred flat 
cars, loaded with pig iron up a twenty percent 
grade for fifty miles, you know that he is a 
moron, an ignoramus, or a child of Adam in 
whom original sin has not been impaired by 
age. Or if, to take an instance from the human 
field, a pan-racial egalitarian tells you that 
Bushmen, Hottentots, Congo Pigmies and 
Philippine negritos, brought together in regi- 
ments and armed with javelins could go 
through a Verdun, Chantilly, or Belleau Wood 
battle front, you have a similar “line” on him. 
Or, even if, to take one instance from politics, 
an assertive mind with democratic convictions 
tells you that the moron half of the American 
population is capable of electing Congressmen 
who, in their turn, are capable of knowing 
“what all the shooting is for” when a tariff bill 
or a League of Nations resolution is under 
debate, you can place him in one or another 
of the above named three categories, according 
to taste. In short, the identification of energies 
with concrete complexes of fact enables us to 
perceive immediately the limits within which 
our measurements certainly must lie and to 
know that if we have obtained a result which 
jumps over them we have made somewhere a 
serious error. It would seem that anything 
more obvious than this truth would be hard 194 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
to discover, and yet alleged physical measure- 
ments in contempt of it, speculative values 
that jeer at it, and prosperity or calamity pre- 
dictions that blaspheme it, are daily fed to a 
voracious public. 
The second way of checking up is given us 
in the fact that every manifestation of energy 
is associated with other manifestations, every 
condition with other conditions, every known 
mode of behaviour with other modes. Three 
examples will suffice for my present purpose. 
One: there is an association, which some- 
times is a low, and sometimes is a high correla- 
tion, between an artificial transformation of 
conditions and money cost\ and conditions af- 
fected by money outlay, if repeated or dupli- 
cated, have an average cost. Wide departure 
of any other measure of artificial transforma- 
tion from this average, or usual, cost is a 
caution signal. 
Two: there is an association which may be a 
low or a high correlation, between money ex- 
penditure and a transformation of conditions. 
For example, per capita expenditure for schools 
provides more education in one place than in 
another, and at one time than at another, but 
there are prevailing average relations between 
expenditure and such facts as number of school 
houses, number of school days in the year, and Measurement of Energies 
195 
average attendance; and these averages must 
be kept in sight when making measurements 
of educational conditions. 
Three: there is a correlation between the 
modifiability (and therefore the improvability) 
of human behaviour and the organic mechan- 
isms which we call brains. That instincts can 
be “reconditioned” (detached from old stimuli 
and made to react to new ones) we know; that 
habits can be taught and acquired, we know; 
that morale can be improved, army discipline 
has demonstrated. But, also, we know (or we 
can know if we will take the trouble to find out 
about it) that not all physiological and not all 
psychological elements, and not all the various 
ethnical complexes of physiological and psy- 
chological factors that compose a population 
are equally teachable. Measurements of social 
betterments that do not check up with these 
facts should be held under suspicion. 
The third way of checking up consists in 
having all observations of fact (i. e. all identifi- 
cations and delimitations of the units to be 
counted) made by more than one observer and 
at different times; in like manner, to have all 
countings, distributions, totalings and analyz- 
ings of countings, made by more than one 
individual; and finally,to carry out the usual 
statistical procedures of comparing the indi- 196 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
vidual results, and obtaining the probable 
error. Happily, it can now be said that before 
long sociologists and social workers will be 
no more able than civil or electrical engineers, 
biologists or psychologists to hold responsible 
positions if they are ignorant of statistical logic 
and methods. 
The mechanical equivalent of molecular, 
atomic, or electronic energy (for example, the 
mechanical equivalent of heat, or of electricity) 
is determinable with accuracy and is used in 
obtaining theoretical work-values, which, how- 
ever, are not true measures of our resources of 
unexpended energy available for work. Re- 
sources are energies stored and carried in ma- 
terial bodies, and these are not homegeneous. 
Two apparently equivalent lots of wood, or 
coal, or oil, turn out to be not strictly equiva- 
lent in combustion. Therefore, our measures 
of resources (which often are the measures 
that we most need) are estimates only. They 
are derived from statistical frequencies, trends, 
and averages, and their value (i. e. their ap- 
proximation to accurate measures) depends on 
the extent and representativeness of the data 
available. 
How much work should a ton of coal of a 
given quality do? How many cubic feet of 
earth should ten men throw into a cart in an Measurement of Energies 
197 
hour? How many families, dwelling two or 
three miles apart in a rural county, should a 
visiting nurse be able to look after sufficiently 
to insure each against any real neglect, to 
instruct mothers and children in essentials of 
health-protection, and attend to usual emer- 
gencies? What may reasonably be expected 
of a school superintendent in an agricultural 
county? What may reasonably be expected of 
an agricultural experiment station of a stated 
endowment and income? These questions, and 
thousands like them, are answerable only in 
terms of averages, obtained in each instance, 
from a large number of representative cases. 
Let us now return to social and societal 
energies, and examine more particularly their 
characteristics, and the problem of their meas- 
urableness. 
And first, what are they? The first step 
toward exact knowledge of anything is to de- 
fine it, by discriminating it (from other things) 
and delimiting it. 
The term “social forces,” as I have intimated, 
is loosely used; in fact, so loosely that it has 
acquired at least three different meanings, 
(i) There are energies that do not originate in 
society but which often produce social and 
societal results. Conditions and circumstances, 
including hardships and dangers, that drive 198 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
men into consorting and cooperation are in 
this sense social and societal energies. It would 
be better to call energies that produce social 
and societal results “socializing energies,” 
whether they originate outside of society or 
within it. (2) Tremendous energies that origi- 
nate in society produce results that may or 
may not be social in quality. Riots and lynch- 
ings, for example, are not. It would be well 
to call these energies “societal,” regardless of 
the quality of what they do. (3) Then we 
should have, as the intelligible and accepted 
definition of societal-social energies all energies 
that both originate in society and produce 
social and societal results: the socializing 
energies that are societal, and the societal 
energies that are socializing. 
What, then, is a social and societal result? 
Any thing, or quality inherent in associa- 
tion and inseparable from society is “social” 
and “societal.” Society is any considerable 
number of human beings living and working 
together, and more or less enjoying themselves 
with one another; and a lot of ways, more or 
less organized into arrangements, and more 
or less made orderly by precedents and rules, 
in which we, human beings, carry on and help 
one another to make life secure and desirable. 
It is a product of association, and association Measurement of Energies 
199 
is a by-product of the collective, multi-indi- 
vidual or pluralistic, mode of the struggle for 
existence. Collective struggle, by comparison 
with struggle by solitary units, multiplies the 
chances of life. Society further multiplies 
chances, and makes life increasingly desirable, 
by deliberated policies and procedures, and 
reactions consequent upon them.2 
These policies and procedures assert, at- 
tempt, and largely achieve control. They are 
comprehensive, but in particular they under- 
take to determine, regulate, or otherwise 
govern, the following matters: defense and 
aggression; resources and opportunities; mi- 
grations, and the composition of populations; 
language, religion, education and morale; con- 
ditions and conduct affecting health and physi- 
cal integrity; employment; income; social or- 
ganization, from the family to the state, from 
master and servant to corporation and labour 
union, from bloc to political party. These 
controls affect each successive generation for 
the term of its natural life. Policies and pro- 
cedures themselves, and their content of 
knowledge, are handed on from generation to 
generation in tradition and by systematic 
teaching, but not in biological heredity. Habits 
and knowledge have to be built up from their 
2 Fide Chapter VIII. 200 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
elements, as individual acquisitions, by each 
new-born child. 
The reactions consequent upon control are: 
(i) A type-making constraint, which supple- 
ments natural selection, (a) by killing off 
kindreds that are composed of individuals or 
groups which are too quarrelsome, intolerant 
and unscrupulous for societal cohesion; a kill- 
ing off which gives a survival chance towhat- 
ever germ-plasm bears and hands on sym- 
pathetic and scrupulous impulses ;(b) by killing 
off kindreds, and in the long run races, that 
are incapable of acquiring and using knowledge, 
or of being used (and, therefore, bred and pro- 
tected, as cattle are) by knowledge-using 
stocks. (2) Explosions of self-determination 
assertative of liberty, and of ethical impulses 
repressive of exploitation. Large-scale ex- 
ploitation undoes past achievement by giving 
a reproductive advantage to exploited stupid- 
ity. Therefore, the emotional and dogmatic 
explosions that repress it have a fortunate 
consequence, not always foreseen by the par- 
ticipant crusaders but vital to civilization. 
(3) A struggle between natural superiors and 
natural inferiors, taking form in class warfare, 
in rules and laws in restraint of ability, in 
egalitarian experiments, and in revolution and 
counter-revolution. A normal outcome (in the Measurement of Energies 
201 
long run) is the elimination of kindreds, classes, 
and societies in which inferiors have exter- 
minated or by fecundity have submerged 
superiors, and have become ascendant. 
In society (understanding by the word all the 
particulars that it denotes, including ways and 
arrangements of associative life, policies and 
procedures, reactions, products, and wastes) 
are comprised all the results effected by so- 
cietal energies. They are the work, the whole 
work, and nothing but the work, that societal 
energies do. Therefore, they are the measures, 
and the only possible measures of societal 
energies. 
But is this work, then, itself measurable, 
in a strict meaning of the word: is it measur- 
able in terms of units fhat can be delimited 
and counted? 
We need not waste energy in arguing that 
society in its unanalyzed integrity is not; that 
its ways and arrangements are not; that its 
policies and procedures are not; and that such 
general reactions as tradition and opinion, 
faith and enlightenment, utilities and values, 
cohesion and liberty, conflict and survival, are 
not. What remains? 
There are further products—proximate and 
ulterior—of societal turmoil and evolution, 
which, in a statistical sense of the word, are 202 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
tangible,, and these, happily for sociology, are 
measurable. Although they are obviously only 
a part of the work that societal energies do, 
and measures of them therefore are obviously 
not truly measures of the societal energies at 
work (which, it now appears, are not really 
measurable at all) these products of social 
evolution are measures of the effectiveness of 
societal energies, and are of scientific value. 
Societal energies directed by knowledge, 
and discharging themselves through the mech- 
anism of societal organization, have increased 
the per capita food supply of the human race 
and diminished the chances of death by starva- 
tion. They have made it possible to diminish 
the annual number, per million individuals, of 
deaths and disabling injuries by accident and 
violence. The possibility would become reality 
if our population contained more men and 
women of B and A intelligence (i. e. conditioned 
intelligence) and fewer morons.3 Per million 
deaths and disabilities from endemic and 
epidemic diseases have been diminished. The 
ratio of safe, sanitary and decent housing to 
population has been increased. Income earn- 
ing opportunity per capita has been increased. 
In civilized lands education has been provided 
’ Intelligence tests to date have been imperfect in that they have not sepa- 
rated intelligence as born from intelligence as conditioned by habit and crisis. Measurement of Energies 
203 
for nearly all who have the will to avail them- 
selves of it. 
These concrete products of societal energies 
are outstanding by reason of their importance. 
There are many others that need not be 
named. All are measurable statistically in 
various ways, but most conveniently and per- 
haps most accurately by the approximation to 
zero of the number of disabilities and deaths 
from such specific causes as famine, accident 
and disease, and by the approximation to zero 
likewise, of the number of unsafe, unwhole- 
some and indecent dwellings, individuals un- 
employed, and illiterates. 
These measures are representative of condi- 
tions, or factors, which are necessary for the 
emergence of an ulterior product of societal 
evolution, namely, an adequate mankind. 
Human society is not an end in itself, it is 
only a means. The normal outcome of societal 
dynamism and functioning is the conservation 
and development of men and women adequate 
to carry on a relatively desirable life, to make 
it yet more desirable, and to hand it on, so 
bettered, to posterity. 
In what then does adequacy consist? An- 
swers to this question a generation ago were 
more or less wrong. Our later biology, and a 
psychology that is rooted in biology, have 204 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
given us an answer that we can rely on, and 
can build our statesmanship upon if we have 
sense enough to do it. 
Every human being comes into the world 
with prepotencies that are inborn (inherited) 
but which can be conditioned by education 
and discipline and so made to function within 
a wide range of possibility and efficiency. 
Society does the conditioning, but it can affect 
prepotency only by selection, that is, by killing 
off certain heredities and conserving others. 
Adequate men and women, therefore, are men 
and women who, by inheritance, are anatomic- 
ally normal, physiologically sound, and men- 
tally able; who by education are informed 
and enlightened, by discipline are made self- 
controlled, and by training are made effective; 
and who, finally, are fecund, reproducing their 
race, transmitting their hereditary qualities to 
a posterity which, so equipped with ability, 
will conserve and increase knowledge, improve 
education, perfect discipline, and increase the 
desirableness of life. 
Provided with this description and concep- 
tion of adequacy, we perceive that human 
beings are not equal as individuals (as mental- 
ized organisms) and that they never can be, 
however democratic our laws and institutions 
may become. Every population is seen to be Measurement of Energies 
205 
made up of grades, or strata. Roughly, these 
correspond to distinctions made in popular 
speech. There are natural superiors (i. e. 
superiors made so by nature and habit and 
other conditioning and not by law) natural 
mediocres, and natural inferiors. Natural su- 
periors have conditioned intelligence above C 
(on the marking scale of the now-familiar 
intelligence tests) and they have no hereditary 
defect. Natural mediocres have a conditioned 
intelligence of C and no hereditary defect. 
Natural inferiors have a conditioned intelli- 
gence below C, or they have other hereditary 
defect.4 
If with these qualities we combine fecundity, 
as for sociological purposes we must, we get 
five grades, namely: A. Natural superiors who 
maintain a high birth rate, thereby trans- 
mitting their high qualities to posterity. B. 
Natural superiors whose birth rate is low; they 
serve their generation, and their thoughts and 
achievements may serve posterity, but their 
qualities die with them. C. Natural mediocres; 
their birth rate may be high or low; whatever 
posterity they have will be mediocre. D. In- 
fecund natural inferiors; they are harmful 
while they live, but they do not transmit harm- 
‘The word “natural” is used in this paragraph and beyond with a mean- 
ing broader than “native,” or hereditary. 206 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
ful qualities to posterity. E. Natural inferiors 
who maintain a high birth rate; the men and 
women of this grade are wholly harmful; 
collectively they are a vast anti-social power. 
All accumulations and controls of societal 
energy are generated in grades A and B. They 
carry the entire load of constructive societal 
work.8 All progress is their achievement. 
And it is probably true, as tests of more than 
one sort have indicated, that not more than 
four and one-half percent of our total popula- 
tion (described as grade A) is capable of dis- 
covery or creative activity, and that not more 
than fifteen percent (grade A plus grade B) 
is capable of leadership. 
It is the new statistical material provided by 
the intelligence tests (not only the army tests 
but also the tests which are everywhere being 
made in schools and in industries and which, 
on the whole, are remarkably confirming the 
results of the army tests) which enable us now 
by combining them with older statistical ma- 
terials to arrive at a general measure of ade- 
quacy; a measure which enables sociology at 
last to advance with sure steps upon the scien- 
tific road of quantitative prevision. The meas- 
ure is simple and will readily be understood by 
the reader who has carefully followed the fore- 
* Not of supervised toil. Measurement of Energies 
207 
going observations. Adequacy, and therefore 
the ultimate effectiveness of societal energies, is 
measured by two sets of correlations, namely: 
(1) the negative correlation of birth rate and 
the positive correlation of death rate with 
hereditary defect, (2) the positive correlation 
of birth rate and the negative correlation of 
death rate with conditioned intelligence. 
These correlations measure the net value of 
human society; the net value of the existing, 
or of any possible societal order. They are a 
value measure of progress.6 
They should be ascertained, not only for 
entire populations, but also for component 
and constituent groups, because the shifting 
of these, when so measured, will indicate the 
trend of our civilization. They should be 
ascertained for colour races, for the native and 
the foreign born, for nationalities, for local 
communities, for kindreds and families, for 
the adherents of religions and sects, for the 
alumni of colleges and universities, and for 
occupations. 
6 In distinction from a distance measure, Vide, ante, p. 138. CHAPTER XII 
METHODS OF MEASUREMENT 
It is as necessary that the scientific student 
of human society should know the essentials 
of statistical theory and method as that he 
should know the essentials of biology, psy- 
chology, and anthropology. If he has not had 
the good fortune to be well instructed in them 
by competent teachers he must dig them out 
by himself, from the text books and manuals. 
If he is made of the right stuff he can do this, 
and will. To bar possible misapprehension I 
warn him that he cannot obtain the requisite 
knowledge from these pages. The purpose 
of this chapter is to say only enough about 
methods of statistical measurement that are 
available in sociology to advise the reader 
what they are and what can be done with 
them. 
When we factorize phenomena we resolve 
them into items of two categories, namely, 
items of sort or kind and items of size. 
In Chapter III attention was called to the 
relativity of units and integers. While any 
208 Methods of Measurement 
209 
unit whatsoever is known or may be conceived 
to be a sum of lesser units, any aggregate of 
units may be viewed as an integer and taken 
as the unit of a larger aggregate. 
When taken as an integer any unit or ag- 
gregate is for scientific purposes an Item. If it 
can be expressed or represented by a number 
it is an item for statistical purposes. 
Items of one given kind are for scientific 
purposes a Sort. The painstaking discrimina- 
tion of items by kind or by quality, and the 
standardizing of sorts by qualitative tests, are 
the beginnings of scientific knowledge. 
An item of sort is crude—or general—if 
it expresses only a broad discrimination of 
quality or of kind which might be made nar- 
rower for working purposes. An item of sort 
is refined—or specific—if it expresses the 
closest shading of quality or the narrowest 
discrimination of kind that can be made for 
working purposes. “A cigar” is a relatively 
crude item of sort. “A Colorado claro perfecto 
Habana” is a relatively refined item of sort. 
Items of one given magnitude are for scien- 
tific purposes a Size. An item of size numeric- 
ally expressed or represented is a Measure. 
The painstaking determination of magnitudes 
by resolving items of size into lesser units, and 
the standardizing of sizes by the use of stan- 210 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
dardized counting devices, namely conven- 
tional weights and measures, and measuring 
and weighing instruments of precision, are the 
beginnings of quantitative scientific knowledge. 
An item of size is coarse if it might be re- 
solved for working purposes into smaller 
magnitudes; it is precise it if could not be 
resolved into smaller magnitudes for working 
purposes. A kilogram is a relatively coarse, 
a milligram a relatively precise item of size. 
Any total of enumerated items is a Count. 
A count may or may not include more than 
one sort, more than one size. A count is a 
numerical item. 
A sum, S, of numerical items divided by 
the number of items, is the Mean of the 
items—the arithmetical average of common 
speech. 
Numerical items arranged in order of magni- 
tude, from smallest to largest, or from largest 
to smallest, is an Array. 
Each item of an array occupies a position. 
Between the positions held by any two items 
are the infinitely numerous positions that 
might be held by fractional values. 
Counting from the initial or smallest item 
toward the final or largest item the half way 
or middle position is called the median posi- 
tion, or simply the Median. If the number of Methods of Measurement 
211 
items is odd there is a median item. If the 
number of items is even the value at the 
median position is fractional. 
The position half way from the initial posi- 
tion to the median is the first or lower Quartile 
position. The position half way from the 
median to the final position is the second or 
upper quartile position. 
Positions one tenth, two tenths, three tenths, 
and so on, of the distance from the initial to 
the final position are Deciles. 
Positions one one hundredth, two one hun- 
dredths, three one hundredths, and so on, of 
the distance from the initial to the final posi- 
tion are Percentiles. 
The sort that most often occurs in a count 
is the typical sort. Briefly it is the Type. 
The size that most often occurs is the modal 
size. Briefly it is the Mode. 
If the numerical items of an array be plotted 
as vertical lines (ordinates) rising from a 
horizontal base line, a continuous line which 
touches all tops may ascend steeply as a 
convex curve, then flatten out into a relatively 
long and slightly rising concave curve, which, 
still concave, finally rises steeply. An array 
which gives this ogive curve, so called, is 
symmetrical or nearly so. It indicates that 
the numerical items which constitute it are 212 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
the work of chance. An array which gives an 
unsymmetrical or “skewed” graph indicates 
the influence of a bias or cause.1 
The number of items of a given sort or a 
given size found under given circumstances, is 
the Frequency of that sort or of that size under 
those circumstances. 
When frequencies are plotted by vertical 
lines (ordinates) erected from successive posi- 
tions on a horizontal line (abscissa) represent- 
ing measures (sizes) the maximum ordinate 
stands at the mode. 
An orderly succession of frequencies from the 
frequency of the smallest measure to the fre- 
quency of the largest one (or from the fre- 
quency of the largest to the frequency of the 
smallest) in a lot of measures, is a Frequency 
Distribution. 
If the greatest frequency occurs at the 
middle point of an orderly succession of fre- 
quencies, and the smallest frequencies occur 
at the extremes the distribution is symmetrical, 
and the mean, the median, and the mode of 
the numerical items comprised in the total 
distribution, coincide and are identical. If all 
1 Inasmuch as the difference between the smallest item of an array and 
the median item is necessarily equal, if the array is symmetrical, to one half 
the difference between the largest item and the smallest one, the ratio of the 
one difference to the other, if the array is unsymmetrical, is obviously a 
measure of the skewness. Methods of Measurement 
213 
frequencies are plotted as ordinates a continu- 
ous line touching all tops is a bell-shaped 
curve. Distribution of this type is known as a 
Normal Frequency Distribution. It indicates 
the work of chance. An unsymmetrical dis- 
tribution is called a Skew. It indicates the 
influence of a bias or cause.2 
If from the mean of a lot of measures of the 
same thing any one measure be subtracted, 
the difference, minus or plus, is a Deviation. 
The mean of a number of deviations (taking 
all as positive) is an Average Deviation. It 
measures the consistency or homogeneity of 
the measures which have been averaged. 
If deviations be squared, the square root of 
the mean of the squares is the Standard De- 
viation. Briefly it is called “sigma” and is 
written a. It is a more exact measure of con- 
sistency than average deviation is. The ratio 
of standard deviation to mean * IQ° is the 
mean 
Coefficient of Variation. It enables us to com- 
pare the variability of one lot of measures with 
the variability of another lot. 
2 The Pearsonian measure of skewness is 
mean — mode 
Skewness = 
If exactness is not required the more easily calculated 
3 mean — median 
Skewness = suffices. 
<T Scientific Study of Human Society 
214 
Measures of the same thing (distance, weight, 
stress, or what you will) that differ one from 
another and deviate from their mean may all 
be erroneous. If one of them is true we do not 
know which one it is. If two or more lots of 
measures of the same thing be obtained, the 
means (averages) of the lots are likely to differ 
and to deviate from their mean. Any mean 
therefore, like any other measure, may be 
erroneous. 
From the mathematics of probability it is 
ascertained that if the deviation of a mean 
from the average of means to which it is 
related be multiplied by 0.67453 the product 
stands in a significant relation to chance. A 
deviation is as likely to exceed this product 
as to fall below it; to fall below it as to exceed 
it. For this reason the product described is 
commonly called the Probable Error. 
But the foregoing proposition does not hold 
true if the frequency distribution is a skew. 
Therefore it has been contended by competent 
statisticians that since it is further ascertained 
from the mathematics of probability that ac- 
curacy is constantly related to the square root 
of the number of measures used it would be 
well to take, as the probable error of an arith- 
’ The fraction 0.6745 of a usually is equal to the median of deviations 
(Median Deviation) from the median of the array. Methods of Measurement 
215 
metic average or mean, the standard deviation 
divided by the square root of the number of 
measures used.4 
Analysis of normal frequency distribution 
demonstrates that a difference between two 
means of three times the probable error is 
unlikely to happen by chance. It indicates bad 
work, bias, or other factor to be scrutinized. 
The statistical analysis of counts into sorts 
and sizes, frequencies and arrays; the measure- 
ment of tendency from or toward zero, and 
from or toward equality; the measurement of 
central tendency and of movement from and 
toward points or axes of reference; and the 
discovery of relations of contingency, correla- 
tion and coordination; these are the major 
quantitative operations and achievements of 
scientific inquiry. The terms here used will 
be defined in due course. 
Observations of magnitude include (i) de- 
terminations of more and less, which stop 
short of an actual count of units to ascertain 
how much more or less; (2) countings of units 
of unknown size, which may be called second- 
ary units since they have not been resolved 
into units of known equality, namely primary 
units; (3) actual countings of equal units. 
1 Vide Elderton, Primer of Statistics, p. 78. 216 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
There are many facts which we know in terms 
of more and less, but not in arithmetically exact 
terms. No actual count of units has been made. 
For example, we know that an adult is older 
than a child, although we may not know how 
much older. We know that a motor car can 
travel faster than a horse, although we may be 
unable to say how much faster. We know that 
Venice had more trade immediately after the 
crusades than London had, although we do not 
know how much more. 
These differences of more and less which have 
not been reduced to arithmetical exactness are 
often of great importance in societal causation. 
The familiar example is that of a popular plur- 
ality or majority in a democratically governed 
state. As far as governmental policy is con- 
cerned, the exact majority or plurality of votes 
cast in the election is of practically no con- 
sequence. The important fact is that one party 
had more votes than the other. This familiar 
example is representative of a large class of 
more and less facts, continually determining 
the course of societal evolution, and the in- 
vestigator of society should learn all that he 
can about them. 
These arithmetically inexact more and less 
classes are quantitative in an algebraic sense. 
Their sign is plus or minus. We therefore may Methods of Measurement 
217 
say that there is an important statistical field 
in which our records are algebraic signs rather 
than arithmetical figures. 
The usual, and on the whole the most pre- 
cise way, of making these records is to put the 
whole whose parts we are investigating equal 
to one hundred, and then to mark off the parts 
as quarters or percentages. Quarters are then 
translated into the terms of ordinary speech 
by designating any part exceeding seventy-five 
percent of the whole as a large majority; any 
part exceeding fifty percent, but not exceeding 
seventy-five percent, as a small majority; any 
part less than fifty but exceeding twenty-five 
percent, as a large minority; and any part less 
than twenty-five percent as a small minority.5 
Observations of more and less ar&perceptions, 
if the phenomena under investigation are with- 
in the field of sight and hearing. We directly 
■perceive the quantitative difference between a 
tall man and a short one, between a slowly 
moving object and one moving rapidly. In 
social and societal investigations, however, the 
entirefield ofphenomena is rarely within range 
of the vision or of the hearing of any one ob- 
server. In this case any records of more or less 
that we may make are likely to be records, not 
6 Giddings, “Exact Methods in Sociology,” Popular Science Monthly, 
Vol. LVI, No. 2, December 1899. 218 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
of direct perceptions, but rather of judgments, 
which, in their turn, are inductive inferences 
from perceived facts. There is here a large 
possibility of error. 
Errors of judgment so arising can be elim- 
inated only by subdividing the whole subject 
or phenomenon under investigation into parts 
that can be and thereby substituting 
an aggregate of perceptions of parts for a judg- 
ment upon an undivided whole. 
For example, let there be a belief that the 
Catholics in a given town attend church in 
relatively larger numbers than the Protestants 
do. This popular belief is merely a judgment, 
if no actual count has been made. It may be 
erroneous. Without making an actual count, 
its truth or error may be established. The 
town in question being subdivided into streets, 
let the investigator station himself in the dif- 
ferent streets one after another, and carefully 
observe whether on Sundays and other church 
days, within the actual field of his vision, where 
perception takes the place of judgment, more 
Catholics or more Protestants are seen to en- 
ter their respective places of worship, no actual 
count, however, being attempted. Obviously 
within this limited field of perception a reason- 
ably careful man may be certain as to the facts 
of more and less. When the entire community Methods of Measurement 
219 
has thus been gone over, an aggregate of definite 
perceptions of parts will have been substituted 
for a vague judgment upon the whole. These 
aggregates must then, of course, be compared 
with the ratio of Catholics to Protestants in 
the total population of the community. 
This method has long been followed in all 
the concrete sciences. The astronomer finds 
the solar system as a whole too large for ob- 
servation by immediate perception. Instead, 
therefore, of being satisfied with a judgment 
upon the system as a whole, he turns his 
telescope upon each of the component planets; 
and his final knowledge of the system consists 
of an aggregate of perceptive observations of 
the parts of the system, with which his judg- 
ment upon the system as a whole is from time 
to time compared and made to harmonize. 
In this manner, the biologist, instead of being 
satisfied with his observation of any animal, 
or even of any organ or tissue, as a whole, 
subdivides it into more and more minute parts, 
upon each of which he turns his microscope; 
and his resulting knowledge of the whole is an 
aggregate of perceptions, and of judgments 
made to harmonize with them. 
Our rule, then, for dealing with quantitative 
phenomena by the algebraic, as distinguished 
from the arithmetical, method is this: For 220 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
every judgment on an undivided whole must be 
substituted perceptive observations upon the whole, 
subdivided into parts; and the parts must be 
sufficiently small for this purpose. Judgments 
of the undivided whole must then be compared 
with the aggregate of observations. 
When this rule has been followed, records of 
more and less, mere algebraic determinations 
though they are, should be as certain, although 
they are not as exact, as arithmetical statistics. 
In fact, this rule is only another form of the 
final test of truth in all the inductive sciences; 
which is, the ultimate agreement or harmony of 
perceptions with reasoned conclusions. If care 
is taken to secure this agreement in all those 
studies of more and less which must necessarily 
be algebraic, rather than arithmetical, in form, 
our results will be certain. 
Units of unknown size are a particular cate- 
gory of “more or less” quantities. They may 
be written a +x or they may be written bx. 
They occur in the so-called “numbers of 
position,” or ordinals, namely, first, second, 
third, and so on. These are not measures from 
zero, or amounts, since we do not know how 
large, or far from zero, first is. If, however, 
we know that third is as distant from second 
as second is from first, we can convert numbers Methods of Measurement 
221 
of position into algebraic expressions of amount 
by assuming a =the unknown distance of first 
from zero and writing them a -f-x, a +2x, a +3X 
, a+nx.6 
When the interval or “step” from one posi- 
tion to another is known to be unvarying, 
although we do not know how long it is, or 
how far the first step is from zero, numbers 
of position, as Sir Francis Galton long ago 
showed,7 may be subjected to statistical an- 
alysis. They may be arrayed, and their me- 
dians and quartiles may be found. 
Gradings or ratings, as, for example, of 
examination papers, are in form numbers of 
position. They are true or just ratings only 
if the “step” from rank to rank as expressed 
in the succession of numbers, if of unknown 
length, is nevertheless unvarying. 
If the step from position to position may 
legitimately be assumed to be unvarying, al- 
though no proof that it is can be offered, 
numbers of position may be used to express 
degrees of more or less. A familiar example of 
empirical gradings by such degrees is the scale 
of consanguinity. The children of brothers or 
sisters we call first cousins, and describe them 
• Pide Thorndike, Mental and Social Measurements, Revised edition, 
ch. viii. 
’ Natural Inheritance, p. 47, and vide Bowley, Elements of Statistics, pp. 5, 
125, and especially p. 126. 222 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
as one degree less nearly related than brothers 
or sisters. Children of first cousins we call 
second cousins, and describe them as two 
degrees less nearly related than brothers or 
sisters, and so on. 
There are important phenomena of relative 
position in which the steps may be taken as 
equal, although we have no means of knowing 
whether they are equal in fact. 
The phenomena here referred to are those 
in which personal feeling, private conduct, or 
public policy is influenced by known inequal- 
ities of merit, or of relationship, or of re- 
semblance. The influence cannot arise, or, if 
it has existed, it must disappear, when in- 
equalities are undetected. If, for example, 
it is impossible for any expert to prove, or for 
the general public to “feel sure” that the step 
from “native born of native parents” to 
“native born of foreign parents” is either 
longer or shorter than the step from “native 
born of foreign parents” to “foreign born 
English speaking,” the actual difference of 
magnitude, if any, is without essential signifi- 
cance for studies of prejudice, consciousness 
of kind, or sense of social solidarity. 
Accordingly, in studies of mental or social 
reaction to difference of attribute, or to in- 
equalities of position, those inequalities among Methods of Measurement 
223 
the steps of relative position that are un- 
recognized by the individuals or by the com- 
munities immediately concerned may be ig- 
nored in statistical analysis. 
When the items of a count are distributed 
in known frequencies of sort, and it is desired 
to redistribute them into grades or ranks, the 
grading may be refined, in accordance with 
the conception of classification by typical 
attribute. 
For example, make eight numbered posi- 
tions (half quartiles) and combine the fre- 
quencies into eight numbered lots, keeping to- 
gether sorts that are most alike in respect of the 
attribute that is supposed to be manifested in 
differing degrees—as brunettes, let us say, 
might be by thirty or more nationalities, or as 
“orthodoxy” might be by twenty or more 
religious denominations—and provisionally 
grade the lots from one to eight.8 
s If there is reason to suppose that in a true grading a plurality of 
all the items of the count would belong somewhere in the middle ranks* 
break up each lot of items into fractional parts, and assign these to the 
eight positions in such proportions as to make a symmetrical distribution 
about a mode at positions four and five. For example, assign one-half of 
lot three and one half of lot four to position four, one half of lot five and 
one half of lot six to position five, one half of lot one and one half of lot two 
to position three, and one half of lot seven and one half of lot eight to 
position six; one quarter of lot one and one quarter of lot two to position 
two, and one quarter of lot five and one quarter of lot six to position four, 
one quarter of lot three and one quarter of lot four to position five, and one 
quarter of lot seven and one quarter of lot eight to position seven; and 224 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
This procedure may be varied in detail to 
any desired extent, by making the positions 
and the lots fewer or more than eight, and 
taking coarser or finer fractional parts for 
distribution, so long as the final distribution 
is made symmetrical, or, if made unsym- 
metrical to correspond to known facts, is 
skewed in a methodical way.9 
The inequality of two numbers a and b is 
measured by the difference a—b. The total 
inequality of n numbers, one to another, is 
the sum of the differences found when each 
number is subtracted from every other num- 
ber, and each difference is counted once, or: 
Total inequality of n numbers = (a—b) 
+ (a —c) + (a — d) +....+ (a — n) 
+ (b -c) + (b —d) +.... + (b —n) + (c -d) 
+ ....+ (c —n) + . . . . + (d — n). 
If the smallest of n numbers be subtracted 
from the largest, the difference, m—s is the 
one eighth of lot one to position one, and one eighth to position four, one 
eighth of lot two to position four, and one eighth to position five, one eighth 
of lot three to position two and one eighth to position three, one eighth of lot 
four to position three and one eighth to position six, one eighth of lot five to 
position three and one eighth to position six, one eighth of lot six to position 
six, and one eighth to position seven, one eighth of lot seven to position four 
and one eighth to position five, and one eighth of lot eight to position five 
and one eighth to position eight. 
’ This method was used by Giddings in “A Provisional Distribution of 
the Population of the United States into Psychological Classes,” The Psycho- 
logical Review, Vol. VIII, No. 4, July 1901, and vide Thorndike, Mental and 
Social Measurements, ch. viii. Methods of Measurement 
225 
range of inequality. It is the quantity of 
reference from which a measure of tendency 
to inequality among given numbers—or fre- 
quencies—may be derived. 
If each lesser frequency in turn be subtracted 
from a maximum frequency the differences 
will all be positive. Their sum is the positive 
inequality of the frequencies in relation to the 
largest frequency among them, and this, di- 
vided by the number of frequencies, is the 
mean positive inequality. 
If each greater frequency in turn be sub- 
tracted from a minimum frequency the dif- 
ferences will all be negative. Their sum is the 
negative inequality of the frequencies in rela- 
tion to the smallest frequency among them, 
and this, divided by the number of frequencies, 
is the mean negative inequality. 
If the ascending or descending steps of ar- 
rayed frequencies are equal, the positive and 
negative inequalities, as above defined, are 
equal. The mean inequality then is equal to 
one half of the difference between the maxi- 
mum and the minimum frequency, or to one 
half of the range of inequality. 
If the steps of arrayed frequencies are un- 
equal, the positive inequality will be greater 
or less than the negative inequality, but the 
mean of the arithmetical values of the positive 226 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
and negative averages will equal as before one 
half of the range of inequality. 
The mean inequality of frequencies, of which 
the positive and the negative inequalities are 
equal, may be called iota, i. The mean positive 
inequality of frequencies may then be ex- 
pressed as n, and the mean negative inequality 
may be expressed as t2. 
If the negative inequality of frequencies is 
equal to their positive inequality, the strength 
of tendency to equality among them may be 
described as equal to the strength of tendency 
among them toward inequality. 
If the negative and the positive inequalities 
of frequencies are unequal, i —n equals i —t2, 
but the signs of these differences are opposite. 
If i — n is positive, it measures strength of 
tendency toward equality; if negative, it 
measures strength of tendency toward in- 
equality. If i —12 is negative, it measures 
strength of tendency toward equality; if 
positive, it measures strength of tendency 
toward inequality. 
If the negative and the positive inequalities 
of frequencies are equal is a coefficient of 
inequality; if they are approximately equal 
it is an approximate coefficient of inequality. Methods of Measurement 
227 
_ l —11 l— Li . 
In any case, or is a precise co- 
efficient of strength of tendency toward equal- 
ity or toward inequality, according to sign. 
These relations stand out sharply in graphic 
presentation. 
If the positive and the negative inequalities 
of frequencies are equal, the frequencies, when 
plotted as equi-distant ordinates arrayed, will 
make a figure that may be bounded at the top 
by a straight slant line. 
If the positive inequality of frequencies 
exceeds the negative inequality, the frequen- 
cies, when plotted as equi-distant ordinates 
arrayed, will make a figure that may be 
bounded at the top by a downward curving 
or concave line. 
If the negative inequality of frequencies 
exceeds the positive inequality the frequencies 
when plotted as equi-distant ordinates arrayed, 
will make a figure that may be bounded by an 
upward curving or convex line. 
Central tendency or the concentration of 
measures about a mean, or, conversely, their 
dispersion or scatter, is measured by the 
average deviation or the standard deviation 
(<r) of the measures from the mean, or by a 
coefficient of variation derived from a. 228 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Contingency, as the term is used in statis- 
tics, is the numerically measured degree, or 
intensity, of association of one phenomenon 
with another, for example of blue eyes with 
fair hair, or the numerically measured degree 
of dependence of one phenomenon upon an- 
other. The measure is a percentage or a co- 
efficient.10 
Concurrence is the appearance between cor- 
responding limits of position in their respective 
arrays, of two correlative measures, a and b, 
which appertain to an identical thing or 
person. 
Measures constituting an array A, and meas- 
ures constituting another array B, may apper- 
tain to identical and identified things, or per- 
sons, or groups, each of which (or whom) has 
contributed two measures; for example,the 
Leviathan, beam and draught; Jack Dempsey, 
height and weight; Kansas, population and 
wealth. Two items, one in array A, the other 
in array B, which appertain to the same meas- 
ured identity, are correlative, or paired, items. 
Correlative items may or may not appear in 
corresponding halves of their respective ar- 
rays: that is, for example, both items or only 
one of them may be found in a super-median, 
10 For methods vide Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, third edition, ch- 
v; and Yule, An Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, ch. v. Methods of Measurement 
229 
or in a sub-median, or in an inter-quartile posi- 
tion. The appearance of correlative items in 
corresponding halves of two arrays is Concur- 
rence. 
The ratio of the number of concurrences to 
the number of measures in one half of each 
array (or of either array), or to one quarter 
of the whole number of measures in each array, 
is the measure of concurrence. 
If the positions of correlative items in their 
respective arrays are determined by chance, 
concurrence and non-concurrence are equally 
probable. If concurrence exceeds or is less 
than non-concurrence, specific causation is 
indicated, and the measure of concurrence is 
the measure of this probability. 
Correlation, positive or negative, is the 
numerically measured variation of an array of 
numerical items with another array. 
There are various measures of correlation. 
The one most often used and most relied on 
is the Pearsonian coefficient. A succinct but 
clear and adequate analysis of it is: 
• y 
The formula used is, r=—=— in which the x's are 
the deviations of the measures in the first series from their 
average, and thejy’j are the deviations of the measures in the 
second series from their average. The letter r stands for the 
coefficient of correlation. The formula reads as follows: The 
coefficient of correlation is the quotient of the algebraic sum 230 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
of the products of each x deviation and its corresponding y 
deviation, divided by the product of the square root of the 
sum of the squares of the x deviations multiplied by the 
square root of the sum of the squares of they deviations.11 
Coefficients derived from positions and rank- 
ings are extensively used in measuring correla- 
tions of school records and other mental and 
proficiency data.12 
Coordination is equivalence of position. For 
example, in botanical or in zoological classifica- 
tion genera are coordinate one with another, 
but are subordinate to orders as orders are to 
classes; species are coordinate one with another, 
but are subordinate to genera. In the ecclesi- 
astical hierarchy priests are of coordinate rank, 
bishops of coordinate higher rank, and arch- 
bishops of coordinate rank yet higher. 
Superordinated or subordinated coordina- 
tion, or the coordination of units within each 
rank throughout a succession of ranks, one 
above or one below another, is obviously a 
phenomenon incidental to all subclassification, 
creating intra-secting categories, or category 
within category, in descending comprehensive- 
ness. 
And when categories are intra-secting, the 
whole content of category B falls within cate- 
11 Marion Rex Trabue, Measuring Results in Education, p. 395. 
11 Multiple correlation and partial correlation are subjects too technical 
for the purposes of this chapter. Methods of Measurement 
231 
gory A; the whole content of category C falls 
within category B; and so on. 
Therefore, statistically, coordination, super- 
ordinate or subordinate, is the appearance of 
certain same units in each of n categories. 
Identity or sameness of content in each of 
two or more categories may be called Cate- 
gorical Solidarity. 
Since all units of category B, intra-secting 
category A, occur also in A, it is plain that in 
these two categories taken together there are 
as many unit instances of “same content” in 
more than one category as there are units in 
category B. 
All units of category C, intra-secting B, 
occur also in B and in A. Therefore, taking 
the first three categories together, they present 
as many unit instances of “same content” in 
more than one category as there are units in 
B plus the number of units in C. 
All units of category D occur also in C, in B, 
and in A. Therefore, in these four categories 
taken together there are as many unit instances 
of “same content” in more than one category 
as there are units in B, plus units in C, plus 
units in D. 
In general, if categorical solidarity be ex- 
pressed by S, a comprehensive category by K, 232 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
and intra-secting categories by ki, k2, k3, 
• • • j kn 
S =kx+k2 q-k3 + .... 4~kn 
S, so obtained, is an amount, and it is 
affected by the number of categories used. 
The degree, or average density, of solidarity, 
category with category, may be obtained, 
therefore by dividing S by n. 
If the number of units in each of n categories 
were the same, and if the “same content” 
(neither more nor less, nor different) were in 
each and all categories, K would equal kx, 
would equal k2, would equal k3, and so on. 
Indicating the greatest arithmetically possible 
solidarity of n categories by G, we of course 
have G = K (n — i), and the greatest possible 
Q 
degree of solidarity of n categories is —. 
. S G S . . 
The ratio - : — or 7; is the coefficient or 
n n G 
solidarity for any values of K, ki and n. 
All measures of solidarity are corresponding 
measures of coordination. 
Any association of units presents to the ob- 
server certain aspects which admit of quanti- 
tative description by statistical methods. 
These aspects are: 1, Extent; 2, Duration; Methods of Measurement 
233 
3, Strength; 4, Compositeness; 5, Form; 6, Re- 
action; 7, Central Point or “center of gravity” 
of Reaction; 8, Contingency, Concurrence, and 
Correlation. 
The statistical examination of the extent and 
the duration of association is the simplest of 
statistical operations. It involves only com- 
pleteness and accuracy of count, and accurate 
determinations of date. 
Strength of association is resistance to dis- 
solution or disintegration. Dissolution, or 
disintegration, is statistically measured by the 
percentage, or other proportion, of associa- 
tions of a given kind that break up within a 
given time. Family cohesion, for example, is 
measured by the divorce rate. 
When units of more than one sort are 
combined in a mixture, the compositeness 
thereby arising is of three degrees, which may 
be named respectively, Variegation, Approxi- 
mate Composition, and True Composition or 
Heterogeneity. 
Variegation is determined by two variable 
quantities only, namely, (1) the number of 
sorts in the composition, and (2) the number 
of items in each sort, that is, the frequencies 
of the sorts. Differences of magnitude among 
variants (i. e., units of sort) and the amount 234 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
of difference that exists between any one sort 
and any other sort (i.e., inequalities of interval 
or step) are neglected. 
When the categorical or sort frequencies of 
a composition are approximately equal, the 
variegation may be described as uniform. 
When sort frequencies are unequal, and one 
frequency exceeds any other, the variegation 
thence resulting may be described as typical. 
Variegation is measured, and thereby quan- 
titatively described, by the coefficient of 
tendency toward equality, or toward in- 
equality, as the case may be, of the sort fre- 
quencies, of the composition. 
Approximate composition takes account of 
the difference between each frequency and 
every other frequency in the composition. It 
is measured by the total inequality of the 
frequencies. 
True composition, or heterogeneity, is the 
totality of differences in a composition. It 
includes not only frequencies of sort, and in- 
equalities of frequencies one to another, but 
also all differences of item from item (in 
respect of dimension, weight, value, or other 
magnitude), and all differences of interval or 
step. If the data are known, heterogeneity 
can be computed by simple algebraic methods, 
which are, however, tedious. Methods of Measurement 
235 
Variegation, fortunately the simplest phase 
of compositeness, is a fact of significance for 
the organic and social sciences. Easily meas- 
ured, it is a measure itself, of strength of ten- 
dency, or of influences selective or constraining. 
Average deviation and standard deviation 
are assumed to measure the strength of a 
mode-making tendency, selection, or pressure 
acting upon variates, i. e., units of size. 
If, for example, poppy capsules be gathered 
at random from a field, and the number of 
stigmatic bands on each capsule be counted, 
and the deviation from the mean number be 
found to be very small, the fact is supposed to 
tell us that the poppies in that field, or their 
progenitors, have survived a severe natural 
selection. The smaller the standard deviation, 
it is inferred, the greater has been the selective 
or mode-making pressure.12 
The same significance attaches to variega- 
tion. The coefficient of tendency to or from 
equality is a measure of type-making tendency, 
selection, or pressure for frequencies of sort, 
probably quite as trustworthy as the coeffi- 
cient of variability for frequencies of size. 
If seeds of a dozen kinds be planted simul- 
taneously and indiscriminately, but in equal 
numbers, in a patch of garden, which is then 
11 Vide Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, second edition, ch. x, sec. 5. 236 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
neglected, and six weeks later plants of the 
dozen kinds are flourishing in approximately 
equal numbers, kind for kind, we infer that 
no selective influence has affected them; while 
if plants of one or two kinds at the end of the 
six weeks are relatively numerous, of other 
kinds relatively few, and of the remaining 
kinds very few, we infer that selection has 
been rigourous. 
Uniformity of variegation then, means a 
negligible type-making tendency, selection, or 
pressure; while marked typicality of sort fre- 
quencies means a type-making tendency rela- 
tively strong, or a type-making selection or 
pressure relatively severe. 
The Forms of association are (i) Tangential, 
or exclusive, no unit of one association occur- 
ring in another association; (2) Inter-secting, 
certain units occurring in more than one asso- 
ciation but no association being wholly com- 
prised in another; and (3) Intra-secting, all 
the units of association B occurring in asso- 
ciation A, all the units of association C oc- 
curring in association B, and so on in descend- 
ing comprehensiveness. 
Tangential association is otherwise described 
as “segregation” when the units of each asso- 
ciation are similar. The simple statistical 
problem presented is to count the number of Methods of Measurement 
237 
like units that in one or another way are placed 
or combined in exclusive grouping. 
Intra-secting associations are a case of sub- 
classification and coordination, superordinate 
or subordinate. The coefficient of coordina- 
tion is a measure of intra-secting association. 
The Reactions of Association are measured 
in units of time, of displacement, and of trans- 
formation. Promptness and persistence of re- 
action are measured in units of time. Degree, 
extent and amount of reaction are measured 
in units of displacement or transformation. 
The statistical description of these reactions 
involves no unusual developments of method. 
The difficulties that are encountered arise in 
the determination of data, in making the 
original measurements. 
The Central Point of Reaction, or, using a 
figure of speech, the center of gravity of re- 
action, is that point about which all reactions, 
including opposing ones, are in equilibrium. 
If units react in different ways and with equal 
power or “weight” the center of reaction is 
the median of the array of the units. If the 
several units, either individually or when 
massed in those squadrons of units which we 
call frequencies, react with different power or 
“weight,” the center of reaction is found on 
that side of the median where the heavier 238 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
weighting occurs. The statistical problems, 
accordingly, that arise in any attempt to de- 
termine the center of gravity of associational 
reaction are those which in statistical analysis 
are known as questions of weighting. 
No phenomena of society are of greater in- 
terest than are the shiftings of the centers of 
associational reaction. Among these are the 
shifting of the center of gravity in politics 
between opposing parties, between radicals 
and conservatives, between classes and masses, 
between rationalists and the upholders of 
instituted authority. 
The foregoing aspects of association are of 
interest in themselves and also, in a higher 
degree, because of their relation to Contin- 
gency, Concurrence, or Correlation. In de- 
termining how far association or any phase of 
it is quantitatively linked with any other fact, 
we get close to the problems of law and cause. 
The contingency of any phenomenon of as- 
sociation may be with an extraneous fact, or 
with any other phenomenon of association 
itself. Extraneous facts collectively are the 
environment. The facts of association whose 
contingencies one with another can be de- 
termined are the aspects of association which 
have here been enumerated. Methods of Measurement 
239 
Among the contingencies of associational 
phenomena one upon another which admit of 
statistical determination the following are 
especially significant. 
The strength of association may vary with 
extent or with duration. It may be found 
that cohesion increases to a certain determin- 
able point more rapidly than extent increases, 
and beyond that point less rapidly. For ex- 
ample, as a fact of observation, large states, 
large towns, large families may be more 
coherent than small ones. A similar relation 
may be found between cohesion and duration. 
Again, within limits, the stability of a 
group may be unaffected by a mobility of 
its units which permits individual units to 
disappear from the group and other units from 
without to replace them. Beyond a determin- 
able limit such mobility of units may impair 
group stability. 
The contingencies of associational phenom- 
ena with the degrees and typicalities of com- 
position are numerous and highly important. 
Within determinable limits similar reactions 
of associated units are contingent upon other 
similarities of the units. Like units, in other 
words, tend to react in like ways. When sorts 
are combined in a mixture, the units of a sort 
may react in ways different from the ways in 
which they react when not in composition. 240 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
And the effects of composition upon reaction 
may be a consequence in part of the propor- 
tions in which sorts are combined. 
Inertia or momentum of associational re- 
action increases in a determinable ratio with 
the typicality of variegation, that is, as one 
sort tends to dominate a composition. This 
is a familiar fact of our social life in all its 
phases, from fashion to politics. Transforma- 
tion goes on at an increasing rate, which may 
be determined, as the proportion of variants 
from type increases. 
And at this point contingency of associa- 
tional reaction upon external fact is discovered. 
Adapation to environment or circumstance 
increases typicality. Crisis multiplies variants. 
Relations of toleration, the reactions of con- 
flict and the reactions of adjustment are 
notoriously contingent upon forms of associa- 
tion, and these contingencies in a great number 
of instances admit of quantitative determina- 
tion. The contingency of toleration is highest 
when association is tangential. Conflict is 
most acute when associations are intersecting. 
Adjustments, both of the interests of units 
one with another and between the opposing 
tendencies towards typicality and towards 
variability, are contingent upon the develop- 
ment of intra-secting association. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A comprehensive bibliography of writings 
on scientific conceptions and methods would 
fill more than one large volume. The following 
short list comprises titles of works in that 
domain which are most useful to students of 
human society, and which, in most instances, 
can be obtained or consulted without great 
difficulty. 
Bagehot, Walter. Physics and Politics. London and New 
York, 1876. 
Booth, Charles. Labour and Life of the People of London. 
3 vols. London, 1891. 
Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People in London. 
15 vols. London, 1902, 1903. A continuation of Labour 
and Life of the People, above. 
Bowley, Arthur L. Elements of Statistics. London, 1901, and 
later editions with revisions. 
Broad, C. D. Scientific Thought. London and New York, 
1923. 
Chaddock, Robert E. Principles and Methods of 
Boston, 1925. 
Clifford, William Kingdon. Seeing and Thinking. London, 
.i879- 
Clifford, William Kingdon. Common Sense of the Exact 
Sciences. London and New York, 1885. 
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antonie. Esquisse d'un tableau 
historique des progres de I’esprit humain. Paris, 1795 and 
1872. 
One of the first thtee attempts at the systematic organization on a large 
scale of social and societal facts. See Morgan and Spencer. 242 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Conklin, Edwin Grant. Heredity and Environment. Princeton, 
first edition, 1915, third edition, 1919. 
Elderton, W. Palin and Ethel M. Primer of Statistics. 
London, 1910. 
Giddings, Franklin Henry. Studies in the Theory of Human 
Society. New York, 1922. Chapter VII, “Order and 
Possibility.” 
Giddings, Franklin Henry. The Grounds of Presumption* 
Journal of Philosophy, November 9,1922. 
Giddings, Franklin Henry. Stimulation Ranges and Reaction 
Areas. The Psychological Review, November, 1924. 
Hankins, Frank Hamilton. Adolf as Statistician. 
New York, 1908. 
Hobhouse, Leonard T.; Wheeler G. C.; and Ginsberg, M. 
The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler 
Peoples: An Essay in Correlation. London, 1915. 
The first extensive determination by methods of correlation of relations 
of form and action patterns one with another. Important. 
Jennings, H. S. The Behaviour of the Lower Organisms. New 
York, 1906. 
A model of precise scientific observation of behaviour, including multi- 
individual behaviour, in its simplest manifestations. 
Jevons, W. Stanley. The Principles of Science. London and 
New York, 1905. 
Kelley, T. L. Statistical Method. New York, 1923. 
Kellogg, Vernon. Evolution. New York, 1924. 
Keynes, J. M. Treatise on Probability. London and New 
York, 1921. 
LePlay, Pierre Guillaume Frederic. Les ouvriers europlens. 
Paris, 1855. 
LePlay, Pierre Guillaume Frederic. La reforme sociale en 
Erance deduite de I’observation comparee des peuples 
europeens. Paris, 1864. Bibliography 
243 
LePlay, Pierre Guillaume Frederic. L’organisation de travail. 
Paris, 1870. The Organization of Labor, translated by 
Gouveneur Emerson, 1872. 
The above three books are pioneer works in the field of systematic ob- 
servation and survey of contemporary societal conditions. Original 
examples of the monographic method. 
Longstaff, G. B. Studies in Statistics. London, 1891. 
A work of unique and great value. 
Mayo-Smith Richmond. Statistics and Sociology. New York, 
J895. 
Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic. London, 1843 and 
New York, 1890. 
Morgan, Lewis H. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of 
the Human Family. (Smithsonian Contributions to 
Knowledge, 17), 1871. 
One of the first three attempts at the systematic organization on a 
large scale of social and societal facts. See Condorcet and Spencer. 
Morgan, Thomas Hunt and others. The Mechanism of 
Mendelian Heredity. New York, 1915. 
Ogburn, William Fielding. Progress and Uniformity in Child 
Labor Legislation. New York, 1912. 
Develops quantitative methods of induction in sociology. 
Pearson, Karl. The Grammar of Science. First edition, 
2 vols. London, 1900; third edition, first vol. only yet 
published, 1911. 
Quetelet, Jacques Adolf Lambert. Sur la theorie de probability 
appliquee aux sciences morales etpolitiques. 1846. 
The first attempt to apply, comprehensively, exact methods to the study 
of human society. 
Rice, Stuart A. Farmers and Workers in American Politics. 
New York, 1924. 
Develops quantitative methods of induction in sociology. 
Ritchie, A. D. Scientific Method. London and New York, 
1923. 244 
Scientific Study of Human Society 
Ross, Frank Alexander. School Attendance in 1920. Washing- 
ton, 1924. 
Develops quantitative methods of induction in sociology. 
Russell, Bertrand. The ABC of Atoms. New York, 1923. 
Russell, Bertrand. Mysticism and Logic. London and New 
York, 1918. 
Soddy, Frederick. Matter and Energy. London and New 
York, 1912. 
Shotwell, James T. An Introduction to the History of History. 
New York, 1922. 
Exemplifies standards of historical criticism. 
Spencer, Herbert. Descriptive Sociology. London, 1874. 
A series of folios not yet completed; one of the first three attempts at 
the systematic organization on a large scale of social and societal facts. 
See Condorcet and Morgan. 
Spencer, Herbert. First Principles. London, 1862. Latest 
edition with author’s final revisions, London, 1900. 
Spencer, Herbert. The Study of Sociology. London and 
New York. 1873. 
Thorndike, Edward L. Mental and Social Measurements. 
New York, 1904. Second edition, 1913. 
Thorpe, Malcolm R., Editor. Organic Adaptation to Environ- 
ment. New Haven, 1924. 
The only comprehensive work on this subject to date. 
Trabue, Marion Rex. Measuring Results in Education. New 
York, 1924. 
Tylor, Edward Burnett. Primitive Culture. London, 1871. 
Latest edition, 1913. 
Introduces precision and precautions into the so-called "comparative 
method.” 
Woofter, Thomas Jackson. Negro Migration: Changes in 
Rural Organization and Population of the Cotton Belt. New 
York, 1920. 
Develops quantitative methods of induction in sociology. 
Yule, G. Udny. Introduction to the Theory of Statistics. 
London and Philadelphia, 1911. INDEX 
Adequacy, measure of, 207. 
Adequate men and women, 204. 
Aillt, in ancient Welsh law an alien, 
20. 
Allport, Floyd, 31. 
Alltud, in ancient Welsh law a 
foreigner, 20. 
Altruism, analysis of, 148. 
Amelioration, 170. 
Aristotle, 141. 
Array, definition of, 210. 
Association, forms of, 236; reactions 
of, 237 seq. 
Attributes, defined, 50, 62; distribu- 
tion of, significance, 93; combina- 
tion of, significance, 93. 
Behaviour, co-individual, 13; multi- 
individual or pluralistic, examples 
of, 12; defined, 50; determiners of, 
29; . . 
Bo-aires, in ancient Irish law cow 
noblemen, 20. 
Booth, Charles, 185. 
Bowley, Arthur L., 221. 
Case method, defined, 93, 94. 
Case work, defined, 94. 
Casual group, defined, 8. 
Categories, 64. 
Causal nexus, 179,180. 
Clan, defined, 17. 
Classification, pragmatic vs. scientific, 
59; coordinate, 67; subordinate, 67. 
Coefficient, of variation, 213; Pearso- 
nian, of correlation, 229; of soli- 
darity, 232; of strength of tendency 
toward equality or inequality, 227, 
*34, *35- 
Combination of attributes or traits, 
significance of, 93. 
Component, relativity and resolution 
of, 62. 
Component groups, 10. 
Compositeness, three degrees of, 233. 
Comte, Auguste, on the nature of 
human society, 141. 
Concurrence, defined, 228, 229. 
Concurrent decision, 131. 
Conditioned intelligence, 202. 
Congregate groups, 10. 
Consciousness, mechanistic, 14; of 
kind, defined, 14. 
Constant, definition of, 24. 
Constituent groups, 10. 
Contingency, defined, 228. 
Correlation, defined, 229; spurious, 
180. 
Coordination, defined, 230. 
Count, defined, 210. 
Culture, areas, 16; patterns, 16. 
Decile, defined, 211. 
Deduction, validity of, 174,175. 
Determiners, of behaviour, 29. 
Deviation, defined, 213; average, 213; 
standard, 213. 
Diagnostic method, 94. 
Distribution of attributes or traits, 
significance of, 93. 
Elderton, W. Palin and Ethel M., 215. 
Energy, comprises both turbulent 
and coordinate motion, 6, 7, 190; 
social, 189, 190; social and societal, 
197 seq; measurements of societal, 
201. 
Engineering, human, 165 seq. 
Environment, compositeness of, 27, 
28. 
Equilibration, 169. 
Error, probable, 214. 246 
Index 
Ethology, 173. 
Experimentation, scientific, defined, 
55- 
Factors, three kinds of, 5-7. 
Feudalism, origin of, 19. 
Field, pluralistic, defined, 80; homo- 
geneous, defined, 84; heterogeneous, 
defined, 85. 
Force, one mode of energy; coordinate 
motion, distinguished from turbu- 
lent motion, 6, 7, 190; social, 189; 
social, three meanings of, 197, 198. 
Frequency, defined, 212; distribution, 
212; normal — distribution, 213. 
Galton, Sir Francis, 221. 
Generative case, the, 99 seq. 
Genetic groups, 10. 
Gens, defined, 17. 
Gentile, 17. 
Gregariousness, distinguished from 
association, 14; defined, 32. 
Group, casual, defined, 8; component, 
10; constituent, 10; genetic, 10; 
intimate, II; shelter, 15; kin and 
kith, 15; totem, 16, 17; clan, 17; 
tribe, 18; herding, 19; agricultural, 
20. 
Gwely, or wele, description of, 20. 
Herding, defined, 32. 
Historical case, the, 99 seq. 
Heterogeneous field, defined, 85. 
Homogeneous field, defined, 84. 
Induction, validity of, 178. 
Inequality, range of, 224, 225; mean 
positive, 225; mean negative, 225. 
Initiation ordeals, primal purpose of, 
149. 
Interstimulation, 13. 
Intimate groups, 11. 
Iota, defined, 226. 
Item, defined, 209. 
Joint family, 18. 
Kin-neighbours, ill. 
Kith, defined, 15. 
Mana, defined, 16; relation to descent, 
Matrilineal, 15. 
Mean, defined, 210. 
Measure, defined, 209. 
Measuring instruments, 191. 
Median, defined, 210. 
Mental equipment, distinguished from 
hereditary intelligence, 54. 
Mill, John Stuart, on a science of 
society, 172, 173; his logic of con- 
comitant variation restated, 181. 
Mode, defined, 211. 
Monographic method, defined, 94. 
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, 
on the nature of human society, 141. 
Multi-individual behaviour, defined, 
50. 
Natural inferiors, 205. 
Natural mediocres, 205. 
Natural superiors, 205. 
Norms, in case phenomena, 97. 
Patrilineal, 15. 
Pattern, defined, 3; form, 4; action, 5; 
factoral, 5; societal form, 8 seq; 
societal action, 11 seq.; culture, 16; 
form, of societal telesis, 144, 145; 
action, of societal telesis, 145. 
Pearson, Karl, 228, 235. 
Percentile, defined, 211. 
Plato, on the nature of human society, 
140. 
Pluralistic behaviour, defined, 50. 
Pluralistic field, defined, 80. 
Prepotencies, 31, 204. 
Presumption, defined, 175. 
Probability, defined, 175. 
Probable error, 214. 
Progress, distance measure of, 138; 
value measure of, 207. 
Psychology, social and societal, 13. Index 
247 
Quartile, defined, 211. 
Quetelet, Jacques Adolf Lambert, 173. 
Range of inequality, defined, 224, 225. 
Reaction, central point of, 237. 
Reconditioning, 31, 151, 152. 
Record, facts of, 100. 
Resemblance, defined, 61, 62; points 
of, 62. 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 141. 
Sachem, 18. 
Sample, defined, 82. 
Segregation, defined, 236. 
Sigma, defined, 213. 
Size, defined, 209. 
Skew, defined, 213. 
Skewness, Pearsonian measure of, 213. 
Social surplus, 168. 
Social work, 164. 
Society, human, distinguished from 
animal herd, 14; defined, 198. 
Sodality, 9. 
Solidarity, categorical, 231; coeffi- 
cient of, 232; degree or average 
density of, 232. 
Sort, defined, 209. 
Spencer, Herbert, on the nature and 
origin of human society, 141; on 
need of sociology, 165. 
Status, 159 seq. 
Survey, two kinds of, 184; social and 
societal, 185; social and societal 
nature and requirements of, 186. 
Telic process, continuous with genetic, 
145, 146. 
Tendency, to equality or inequality, 
226, 234, 235. 
Testimony, fallibility of, 101 seq. 
Thorndike, Edward L., 221, 224. 
Tilney, Frederick, experiments of on 
animal instinct action patterns, 5. 
Totem, defined, 17. 
Toynbee, Arnold, neighbourhood 
house of, 154. 
Trabue, Marion Rex, 229, 230. 
Tribe, defined, 18. 
Type, defined, 211. 
Unit, relativity of, 43; of investigation, 
44, 45- 
Variables, defined, 24; environmental, 
27, 28; organic, 28, 29. 
Variation, concomitant, statement of, 
180, 181. 
Variegation, determination of, 233. 
Veblen, Thorstein B., 59. 
Villeinage, mediaeval, 162; legal, 163. 
Visualized ends not fortuitous, 145. 
Ward, Lester F., on the nature of 
human society, 141, 142; on appe- 
tites and desires as primordial social 
energies, 190. 
Williams, James M., 187. 
Work, measurements of, 191, 192; of 
societal energies, 201. 
Would-be states, 155. 
Yule, G. Udny, 228.