ABSTRACT
The distinctness of the words “social” and “natural” inevitably suggests that the subject-matters denoted by them must be mutually exclusive. Social facts and the human beings between whom they take place are located in physical time and space. The social life of human beings is within the realm of natural events; but certain distinctive characteristics of the social life make it the object of a group of special studies which may be called the natural sciences of human society. The data of the social sciences are more complex and refer to objective relations between different people. The social sciences may be said to deal with the life of human beings in their group or associated life. The exclusively teleological character of social science has been maintained not only from the psychological but also from the moral or jural point of view. The practical difficulties of repeating social facts for purposes of direct observation are too obvious to need detailed mention.
