actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete
survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on
lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since
Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to
social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the
evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the
applicability of biology to [Page: 58] sociology. Many are, indeed,
vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in
geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to the
interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the
contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both
social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and
bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed.

[2] "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118.

But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded sociologists
have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories
than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to
maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore,
to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his
generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature,
so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a
period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and
historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of
regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and
region.

May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any
rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us,