The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s1.2

c5.s1.2

Dualism or rather pluralism is, on the contrary, the key to the methodology of the present author in the interpretation of *viśva-śakti* or world-forces. The position of a modern Italian thinker, Pareto,⁹ in his *Trattato di Sociologia Generale* in this regard is acceptable. In his judgment historical materialism marked a noteworthy scientific progress in so far as it placed in clear light the contingential character of certain phenomena, namely, the moral and the religious, to which an absolute character was ascribed and is still ascribed by many. Further, it has, says he, certainly a part of truth because it asserts the interdependence of economic and all the social phenomena. But the error lies in changing this interdependence into a relation of cause and effect.