The error consists in looking for the explanation of social phenomena in the most general laws. This is natural within certain limits, but has been pushed to extreme, but logical consequences, by the American, Carey (_Social Science_). He looks, in effect, to one of the oldest sciences, and one, consequently, relating to the most highly general phenomena, those of astronomy, for the universal laws of society. Geometry, he holds, gives us principles equally valid for the chemist, the sociologist, and for him who measures the earth. A system assuming to explain complex phenomena solely by the laws of phenomena more simple, may be compared to the effort to give an account of a book, not by reading it line by line, but by examining the cover and the title-page.
As DeGreef elsewhere puts it, there is a hierarchy in science, proceeding from the more general to the less general, depending on the nature of the phenomena studied. This hierarchy has been variously stated. Comte puts it thus: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, social physics (sociology). Baldwin,[101] writing much later, of course, puts it thus:--
So here, as elsewhere, there is a gradation, a hierarchy, in science: chemistry necessary to life, but not itself of life; forces in the environment necessary to evolution, but not themselves vital; life-processes necessary to consciousness, but not themselves mental; consciousness necessary to society, but not all consciousness social; social consciousness necessary to social organization, but not all social consciousness actually in a social organization.
Now the point with DeGreef is that the special laws of each successively narrower group of phenomena are to be explained only by concrete study, and that it is wholly vain to think that the application of principles drawn from other, more general groups of phenomena give us these laws. Thus the economists talk of "equilibria" between various economic forces, just as if they were physical forces;[102] and a whole school of mathematical economists has arisen, who find economic life a thing that will fit into equations. This work is valuable, but it is not final. Analogies are helpful, but are not ultimate. Similarly, the biological conception, which likens society to a man, has its contributions. The biological analogy has been pushed very far: thus Novikow calls the social intellectual _élite_ the social _sensorium_; Lilienfeld likens the action of a mob to female hysterics; Simiand calls the idle rich the adipose tissue of society, the priests also represent fat, while the police are the social phagocytes which eat up wandering criminal cells.[103] But this, though suggestive, is not an ultimate social philosophy or even an approach to it. Even DeGreef, as I shall indicate a little later, errs by trying to trace a too rigid parallel between individual structure and social structure. We must introduce a careful study of the peculiarly social phenomena, those phenomena which are to be found only in society, before we are privileged to talk of a social organism or a social mind.[104]