Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/116

 SEMINAR NOTES.

developments in systematic sociology are evidences of a change of front in general philosophy. Men have everywhere and always differed in opinion about the intrinsic and the mediate value of all things. Especially has the question been discussed in connection with music, sculpture, painting, poetry, science—Is it valuable chiefly for its own sake, or chiefly for its utilitarian services? Without prying into the psychology of the change, we note the fact that men are more generally content than ever before to adjourn this attempt at giving an absolute position in the scale of values to the different objects of human interest; and we are able to say of each object of knowledge—it is worth attention both for its own intrinsic importance and for its value as a fragment of all useful knowledge. In other words, we no longer take either horn of the dilemma, but we regard all knowable truths both as ends and as means; as the goal of one stage of knowledge and as the points of departure for another stage.

The civilization in which our own lot is cast has without formal or very distinctly conscious action adopted as a last applicable standard for measuring the worth of all knowledge the visible service of that knowledge to man. In other words we are all in a real sense utilitarians. Scholars of a certain type zealously cultivate the tradition that all truths are uniformly important. This tradition is as false as the vulgar version of our democratic doctrine, "all men are born free and equal." All truths are not equally important. On the contrary they vary in importance in direct ratio with their bearing upon human weal. This is not to imply that the ratio may always or often be precisely determined. It will doubtless never be possible to apply this standard so that we may catalogue all sciences and all truths organized by sciences in the exact order of their utility. The impossibility of making exact application of the principle does not vacate the principle itself. The principle is at all events applicable in a certain approximate way.