SOCIOLOGIST IN THE HOUSE
309
sex, good mores, and in lighter crimes against person"
(sic);
though the authors note with concern that
if
one compares the
record of 20,000 average American citizens with that of 20,000
outstanding citizens (including "all the Presidents and Vice–
Presidents of the United States and members of their Cabinets"),
the crime rate for the latter group is markedly higher (p. 75).
Still, by comparison with such people as Thucydides, Nero, and
Machiavelli, the United States comes out fairly well.
While criminality among rulers appears to be a constant
phenomenon, a special problem characteristic of our epoch arises
from the alarming circumstances that "the Sensate form of culture
which has been dominant in the Western World during the last
five centuries is disintegrating" (p. 117), in consequence of which
"Ideologies of John Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and other varieties
of democratic, liberal, progressive, conservative, socialist, syndical–
ist, communist, anarchist ideologies; those of equality, freedom,
free enterprise, planned economy, welfare society-all these
ideologies which previously inspired are at present about dead."
Exactly what my aunt Ida always said, only she had not studied
sociology and so could not express herself in such elevated lan–
guage. Does someone object that Professor Sorokin is not a real,
honest-to-goodness sociologist, but a Toynbeean prophet in sheep's
clothing? Then let
him
consider the almost endless list of his
publications, and his apparent success in getting both the public
and the academic world to take him seriously. Another possible
explanation might be that the author of the above quotations is
quite simply dotty. This I believe to be the case, but the fact
remains that his colleagues have not so far mustered up sufficient
courage to make a public announcement to this effect. Could it be
that they fear the resulting discredit to their profession, were it
officially admitted that one of its most widely known representa–
tives is, to put it quite plainly, not quite in his right mind?
Whatever the answer to these and similar questions may in
the end tum out to be, it must, I
think,
be admitted that
sociology offers the layman more entertainment, and a wider
range of bizarre contrasts in tone and substance, than any other
intellectual discipline, not excluding psychoanalysis. Perhaps this
state of affairs should not be taken tragically. After all, every
