<P> To have given clear and unified answers in familiar empirical terms to those theoretical questions which most occupied men's minds at the time, and to have deduced from them clear practical directives without creating obviously artificial links between the two, was the principal achievement of Marx's theory . The sociological treatment of historical and moral problems, which Comte and after him, Spencer and Taine, had discussed and mapped, became a precise and concrete study only when the attack of militant Marxism made its conclusions a burning issue, and so made the search for evidence more zealous and the attention to method more intense . </P> <P> Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820--8 December 1903) was one of the most popular and influential 19th - century sociologists . It is estimated that he sold one million books in his lifetime, far more than any other sociologist at the time . So strong was his influence that many other 19th century thinkers, including Émile Durkheim, defined their ideas in relation to his . Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society is to a large extent an extended debate with Spencer from whose sociology, many commentators now agree, Durkheim borrowed extensively . Also a notable biologist, Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest". While Marxian ideas defined one strand of sociology, Spencer was a critic of socialism as well as strong advocate for a laissez - faire style of government . His ideas were highly observed by conservative political circles, especially in the United States and England . </P> <P> The first formal Department of Sociology in the world was established by Albion Small - at the invitation of William Rainey Harper - at the University of Chicago in 1892, and the American Journal of Sociology was founded shortly thereafter in 1895 by Small as well . However, the institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline was chiefly led by Émile Durkheim (1858--1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social research . While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality . Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method (1895). For Durkheim, sociology could be described as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning". </P> <P> Durkheim's monograph, Suicide (1897) is considered a seminal work in statistical analysis by contemporary sociologists . Suicide is a case study of variations in suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, and served to distinguish sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy . It also marked a major contribution to the theoretical concept of structural functionalism . By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than that of Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes . He developed the notion of objective sui generis "social facts" to delineate a unique empirical object for the science of sociology to study . Through such studies he posited that sociology would be able to determine whether any given society is' healthy' or' pathological', and seek social reform to negate organic breakdown or "social anomie". </P>

Which of the following notions is regarded by sociologists to be true