EARLY ENGLISH POSITIVISTS AND THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.

One remark made more frequently by sociologists than by their gibing critics that sociology has not yet come to that development which commands from its adherents wholehearted agreement as to the objectives to be aimed at, the field to be limited, and the methods to be used. Not only is this lack of unanimity characteristic of the science as a whole, when viewed apart from national boundaries, but also even within each country there is still to be found great diversity of opinion as to the major concepts and abstractions of this field of inquiry. England seems to offer the one exception. It is not that English sociologists have consciously developed an agreement and so are working as a unified group for the advancement of their science, for they seem to be less aware of disagreement and of the controversial aspects of the situation than most workers in the field. It is rather that there seems to be a fairly general acceptance of the idea that there is something called a sociological point of view which can be applied to economics, anthropology, religion, or what not, but that point of view is infinitely elastic and does not cry to be defined nor elaborated into a separate discipline.