ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why the method of interpreting society is justified. The very complexity of social fact drives us to the individual feelings, as interpreters; and the appearance of "chance" in history, the prominence of conspicuous persons at critical moments, seems to give the explanation in terms of individual character added force. Parenthetically the chapter may admit that feelings and ideas as tags or labels have a certain practical utility for scientific investigation which may continue even after a more satisfactory system of interpretation is in use. No matter how highly generalized or how specific the ideas and feelings are which the people are considering, they never lose their reference to a "social something". The psychic process may correspond admirably to brain physiology, but concreted "chunks" of brain will not serve on crude causal lines to explain "society", since society is itself—to adopt that phrasing—just brain "chunks" and nothing more.
