Excerpt from The Economic Synthesis: A Study of the Laws of Income

Similarly, sociology begins with the study of static phenomena -a study not at first very profound. J ohn Stuart Mill pointed out that Comte's writings on social statics were poor and incoherent in comparison with the work of the same author in the dynamic and evolutionary fields.1 Herbert Spencer frankly admitted how imperfect and erroneous were his first statical generalisations, and he found 'it necessary to correct them in essential particulars as a result of reiterated study of the dynamic laws of society and of nature.2 But not until quite recently has there been manifest a tendency to pass from the dynamic researches, which up till now have occupied almost the whole field of sociology, to positive and more elevated synthetic studies.3 Hence in sociology also a primi~ tive and imperfect statical stage gives place to a period of dynamical study, and upon the foundation of this latter there arises, in a yet later stage of development, a scientific and profound synthesis.

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