Transcription
The method of this book is to take up man as an isolated unit: examine his characteristics, discuss the abstract forces that are working upon him, and derive, by these inquiries, a theory of society.Sociology, it seems to me, will advance by a contrary process, for the first method is just as though one ought to build up a science of geography by a disquisition of the chemical characteristics of the earth & its atomic construction. The effective procedure, it seems to me, is to begin with an actual community, examine its internal and external relationships, and to finally analyze out the forces that give it form & contour, even as the geographer analyzes out the effect of wind, rain, frost & other agents of erosion.