Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/284 (page 21)
    society itself possesses. They may and usually do change as each society changes, and especially as the thoughts of men in each society change.”1 They are, of course, not eternal. They may, with changes in the thoughts of men, gradually fade away, as indeed, chattel slavery and witchcraft have in most countries faded away. They may be gradually supplemented by new patterns, eventually in replacement of those that are fading away. But compared with particular living organisms these immaterial and intangible entities are relatively indestructible; actually more permanent than many a biological species; some of them perhaps nearly as indestructible as the ma¬ terial atoms themselves. Classification of Social Facts The relations between men—the social institu¬ tions that we have to study—differ considerably in character. Some of them are manifested in groupings that are transient and accidental, as among the fellow-travellers on a journey, or among the men and women jostling each other in a street crowd, or queuing up at a railway booking-office. On the other hand, some of them, like vernacular speech, or the conception of law, endure over many genera¬ tions of men and are so firmly fixed and so stable 1 “We know what we are, but no people knows what it might become in two generations. . . . Prevalent states of mind do not change without cause. But given the cause, they can change beyond assignable limits.” {Ibid, p. 31.)