ABSTRACT
Sociology has a special subject matter of its own that historical, biological and psychological studies, and studies emphasizing causes in the physical environment. In nineteenth-century England, a theory of social systems of this kind was worked out by the economists and by the utilitarian philosophers. The three outstanding limitations of English sociology are its empiricism, in a special sense, its positivism and its individualism. Graham Wallas, alone amongst his fellow Fabians, drew attention to the non-rational motivation of human beings in politics and in due course Trotter and McDougall were to codify these in terms of a theory of individual instincts. Historical and sociological writing was devoted to the alleged discovery of the Geist which gave meaning to a particular historical period or culture. Durkheim was attempting, as much as any English sociologist, to assimilate social to natural causation. The Durkheimian tradition leads to a kind of sociologistic fatalism.
