Excerpt from A Philosophy of Social Progress I will make bold to state my heresies dogmatically. Sociology is commonly described as the science of social life. I do not believe that there is or can be any science of social life; nor do I believe that sociology is or can be a science. There is a little scientific knowledge of some few of the conditions under which we socii live, of some few of the activities in which our social life is manifested. What passes for sociology is a collection of generalizations of very varying value; and it is inevitable that most social generalizations shall be at once more or less dignified guesses, and more or less disguised ex pressions of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and beliefs, of their originators. There may, however, be a philosophy of social life - or rather, of social change; but this will be transcendental, of course, and will always be very closely analogous to a religious faith. It will vary from age to age, just as the forms of faith do; that is to say, the expression of its dominant conceptions will vary. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.