| Summary: | "Though the work here offered the public is termed Sociology, it does not promise a full and systematic discussion of the subject. Its aim is more simple and narrow. It passes familiar principles, and principles to which the author can make ho important additions, and concentrates attention on points at which he is best able to reward it; and this with only secondary reference to general symmetry. There is in the book a constant unwillingness to accumulate material of no new value. The work is, however, a sociology in the fact that all its discussions tend to outline the entire field, and to give, in their relation to each other, the distinct departments which it embraces. While theoretical completeness is by no means a matter of indifference in this treatise, there is a predominant interest in questions of immediate moment to society. Not much is attempted by way of formal inductive proof. The mind is easily misled by the appearance of this proof, when it is really wanting. The facts of society cover so large a field, and are so flexible in interpretation, that it is not difficult to marshal them in considerable numbers in behalf of any fairly rational statement"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
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