THE PROMISE
worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they
cannot understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives?
That—in defense of selfhood—they become morally insensible,
trying to remain altogether private men? Is it any wonder that
they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap?
It is not only information that they need—in this Age of Fact,
information often dominates their attention and overwhelms
their capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason
that they need—although their struggles to acquire these often
exhaust their limited moral energy.
What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of
mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason
in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the
world and of what may be happening within themselves. It is this
quality, I am going to contend, that journalists and scholars,
artists and publics, scientists and editors are coming to expect of
what may be called the sociological imagination.
1
The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand
the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner
life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It enables
him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their
daily experience, often become falsely conscious of their social
positions. Within that welter, the framework of modern society is
sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety
of men and women are formulated. By such means the personal
uneasiness of individuals is focused upon explicit troubles and
the indifference of publics is transformed into involvement with
public issues.
The first fruit of this imagination—and the first lesson of the
social science that embodies it—is the idea that the individual can
understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by
locating himself within his period, that he can know his own
chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals
in his circumstances. In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in many
ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of man's