attention to the need of a scientific understanding of human society.
The socialists and other radical reformers, in other words, have very
largely set the problem which sociology attempts to solve. Practically,
moreover, the indictments and charges of the socialists and anarchists
against the present social order have made necessary some study of that
order to see whether these charges were well founded or not. In this
sense sociology may be said to be a scientific answer to socialism, not
in the sense that sociology is devoted to refuting socialism, but in the
sense that sociology has been devoted very largely to inquiring into
many of the theoretical assumptions which revolutionary socialism makes.

The further relations of sociology to socialism will be taken up later.
Here we are only concerned to have the reader see that there is a sharp
distinction between the sociological movement on the one hand, that is,
the movement to obtain fuller and more accurate knowledge concerning
human social life, and the socialist movement, the movement to
revolutionize the present social and economic order. Moreover, it may be
remarked that while socialism seems to be mainly an economic program, it
involves such total and radical reconstruction of social organization
that in the long run the claims of socialism to a scientific validity
must be passed upon by sociology rather than by economics.

The Relation of Sociology to Social Reform.--From what has been said it
is also evident that sociology must not be confused with any particular
social reform movement or with the movement for social reform in
general. Sociology, as a science, cannot afford to be developed in the
interest of any social reform. Certain social reforms, sociology may
give its approval to; others it may designate as unwise; but this
approval or disapproval will be simply incidental to its discovery of
the full truth about human social relations. This is not saying, of