Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/543

Rh maintenance of society when engaged in conflict—all these belong to static sociology.

This does not mean that sociology is condemned to a restricted view of conduct looking only to its influence on the group and not at all to its effect on the individual himself. It is not a science of group tyranny, needing, as a corrective to its one-sidedness, a science of ethics that shall regard conduct from the side of the individual. It is quite competent to comprehend in its view at once the benefits of restraints or sacrifices on the one hand, and their costs on the other, and to seek the point of equilibrium between them. It accordingly holds the balance true between the individual as restrained and the individual as a member of the public and hence beneficiary of the restraint. No science of ethics, therefore, can assist sociology to its conclusion.

Sociology, then, is certain to absorb the objective or social department of ethics. But there is a subjective branch of ethics, which, if its basis be broadened from conduct to life, might constitute a science. It is legitimate to compare pains and pleasures, to study the reactions of conduct, to criticise estimates of utility and to set up standards for judging experiences. The effects of grouping and contrast of gratifications may be shown. The laws of bodily and mental health may be formulated to indicate the limits within which choices should be confined. Such an ethics would constitute a science of living, of getting the most into a life for the man who lives it. For the man who ignores other men, it would be profoundly egoistic; for the man of warm sympathies and refined tastes it would commend no small part of the injunctions derived from social ethics. But in any case this hedonistic science taking the individual's point of view, would place all the restraining laws and customs of the social environment on a plane with the hampering restrictions of the physical environment, as disagreeable circumstances to be evaded, got rid of, or brought to terms as soon as possible.

From the social point of view, such a body of doctrine would constitute an immoral rather than a moral science, and could not fail to bring on the head of the expounder a storm of