Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/633

Rh creature is feeling, i. e., it is psychic. From the standpoint of Nature, feeling is a means to function. From the standpoint of the organism, functfon is a means to feeling. Pleasure and pain came into existence in order that a certain class of beings might live, but those beings, having been given existence, now live in order to enjoy. This enjoyment of life, which we may say was not contemplated by Nature, or to use Weismann's expression, was "unintended," and which forms no necessary part of the general scheme of Nature, becomes, once it has been introduced, the sole end of the beings capable of it. As Nature cares nothing for their enjoyments and is indifferent to their sufferings so they in turn care nothing for her great scheme of evolution, and would not make the smallest personal sacrifice to further it. Yet, from the ver.y manner in which this new element came into the world, this single pursuit of their own good proves to be that which could alone secure the success of Nature's scheme. Pleasure means life and pain means death. This new element is nothing more nor less than the moral element. No such element exists in Nature outside of this class of beings. Nature is wholly unmoral. The moral world is a comparatively restricted one. It is confined exclusively to animal life, includingof course human life. Yet it is not to be despised. To Nature at large it is nothing. To the sentient world it is everything. Man belongs to that world and it is everything to him. Only it is needful that he should recognize that it is no part of the scheme of Nature except accidentally, or at most incidentally. The realization of this truth is calculated to teach him that modesty which is essential even to his own welfare. The prevalent view that ethics is a vast system coextensive with the universe belongs to that class of vainglorious conceptions that make up the anthropocentric philosophy of the prescientific period and of the uninformed generally, and tends, like all crude and vaunting ideas, to render men arrogant and intolerant. But having said thus much it is necessary to recognize also that sociology has no other course left than to proceed upon the assumption that the good is everything.