Charles Horton Cooley

Reflections Upon the Sociology of Herbert Spencer

I870, say, and I890 did so at the instigation of Spencer. While he did not invent the word (though most of us had never heard it before), much less the idea, he gave new life to both, and seemed to show us an open road into those countries which as yet we had only vaguely yearned to explore. His book, The Study of Sociology, perhaps the most readable of all his works, had a large sale and probably did more to arouse interest in the subject than any other publication before or since. Whatever we may have occasion to charge against him, let us set down at once a large credit for effective propagation. It is certain that nearly all of us fell away from him sooner or later and more or less completely. My own defection, I believe, was one of the earliest and most complete; and since the recoil has gone farther with me than with most others, it is not unlikely that I now fail to do him justice. However, my views, such as

Political Economy and Social Process

I had formerly some claim to be called an economist, having taken a Doctors degree in that subject in x894. Having since that time devoted myself to sociology it is only recently that I have endeavored to recover my economic foothold by reading those current books that seem to have most acceptance. The following paper is in the way of general comment on this reading. The science and philosophy of the present day strives to see everything as part of a process, as growing out of the past under the operation of ascertainable laws, and giving rise, in a similar way, to the future. What should this mean as applied to economics ? What should we expect of a doctrine of economic process? Such a doctrine should, of course, embrace something corresponding to the theory of production, exchange, valuation, competition, and the like which we now study in the textbooks; but it should do much more than this: it should show these immediate processes as consistent and intelligible parts of economic process at large; it should enable us to understand their human significance and to act wisely with reference to them. Practical guidance is what we have a right to ask of every social science, and that we may have this, special phenomena must be seen in the light of their larger relations. An adequate doctrine must, then, take account in the largest possible way of the economic movement with a view to rational social action for economic welfare. Where economics falls short of this it fails of its essential function; and if it does fall short, if the function cannot be fulfilled immediately, it should not for a moment be abandoned as an idea; we should keep it in view and be content with no substitute.