Even when one qualifies this last generalization, its outline remains pretty sharp. The development of what are called the social sciences was dimly outlined in Bacon’s Novum Organon; but it was not till the eighteenth century, with Quesnay and Montesquieu, that the movement gained any real headway, and down to this day a large part of what is called science in Economics, Politics, and Sociology is only disguised literature--work in which the jargon of science is accepted as a substitute for the scientific method of arriving at factual truth, and in which the effort to mold conduct overwhelms the attempt to reach correct conclusions. Indeed, among the economists and sociologists there has been a persistent dribble of discussion as to whether or not their subjects entitled them to the august designation of scientists. It is not without reason that the social and human sciences have been distrusted by the devotees of physical science, so that, for example, the British Association has long had a single section devoted to the social sciences in which Sociology, the mother of them all, is permitted to enter as a subclassification of Anthropology! The nearer the investigator gets to man, the more easily he is overwhelmed with the complexity of his subject; and the more tempted he is to adopt the swift and easy partisan methods of the novelist, the poet, the prophet. The mere concealment of this act of seduction under the rough, grey cover of scientific jargon means frequently that the social scientist has added to the offense of not being a good scientist by not even being a good literary man. Hence there is a great gap between the more external part of the world which has been affected by science, and that part, nearer to man and man’s institutions, which has yet for the greater part to be conquered. While the physical equipment of New York compares with that of fourth century Athens as Athens itself would compare with an Aurignacian cave, the life of men in the city is perhaps more disordered and futile and incomplete than the author of the Republic found it. The moral of this contrast need hardly be pointed in so many words. The idolum of science is incomplete; for it chiefly touches life in its physical sector; and it remains to complete the span so that every activity and condition may be described, measured, and grasped in scientific terms. With the vast modern improvement in our physical arrangements in view, it must occur to almost anyone that a permanent advance in social life depends upon a much more thorough and realistic acquaintance with the facts than the social sciences have yet been able to provide. Before an army moves over the land it is well for it to have moved in someone’s mind over a topographic map. Lacking such maps, all our day to day improvements have been wasteful sallies into eutopia, proceeding without order, without a sufficient equipment, and without any general plan. 3