  Why, Du Bois asks, did Comte “hesitate so strangely” before the prospect of treating human action as the proper object of sociological inquiry? The answer, Du Bois claims, is the “Great Assumption…that in the deeds of men there lies along with rhythm and rule…something incalculable”—an assumption in light of which the prospect of launching a science that “would discover and formulate the exact laws of human action…seemed to be and was preposterous” (ca. 1905, 274). Comte wavered before what Du Bois calls “Paradox:” on one hand, “The evident rhythm of human action;” on the other, “The evident incalculability of human action” (ca. 1905, 275). Where Comte wavers, however, Du Bois sallies forth, writing “[w]hy not…flatly face the Paradox? frankly state the Hypothesis of Law and the Assumption of Chance and seek to determine by study and measurement the limits of each” (ca. 1905, 276).