should state the law of falling bodies, and suppose that an objector
should say: You state your law as a cold, mathematical fact and you
declare that all bodies will fall conformably to it. How heartless! You
do not reflect that it may be a beautiful little child falling from a
window.

These two suppositions may be of some use to us as illustrations.

Let us take the second first. It is the objection of the
sentimentalist; and, ridiculous as the mode of discussion appears when
applied to the laws of natural philosophy, the sociologist is
constantly met by objections of just that character. Especially when
the subject under discussion is charity in any of its public forms, the
attempt to bring method and clearness into the discussion is sure to be
crossed by suggestions which are as far from the point and as foreign
to any really intelligent point of view as the supposed speech in the
illustration. In the first place, a child would fall just as a stone
would fall. Nature's forces know no pity. Just so in sociology. The
forces know no pity. In the second place, if a natural philosopher
should discuss all the bodies which may fall, he would go entirely
astray, and would certainly do no good. The same is true of the
sociologist. He must concentrate, not scatter, and study laws, not all
conceivable combinations of force which may occur in practice. In the
third place, nobody ever saw a body fall as the philosophers say it
will fall, because they can accomplish nothing unless they study forces
separately, and allow for their combined action in all concrete and
actual phenomena. The same is true in sociology, with the additional
fact that the forces and their combinations in sociology are far the
most complex which we have to deal with. In the fourth place, any
natural philosopher who should stop, after stating the law of falling