Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/693

 RELATION BETWEEN SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS 677

But in ethics this manner of view has not merely methodological value. Here the standards and the ideals have also a positive and practical significance. The most intimate connection between unity and multiplicity in the life of the single individual and in the life of society is in ethics an end which ought to be reached, and it is the task of ethics to find means and ways which can make an approxima- tion to this end possible. The highest aim of social ethics would be an empire of humanity in which there is the greatest possible multi- plicity in the development of personal life and, even by this very means, the greatest intimate union of personal beings. If the single individual in developing himself in his own peculiar way gives the best possible contribution to the whole life of society, and if, on the other side, society is organized in such a manner that a free and full development is possible for all individuals, then we are approaching to the ethical ideal. Ethical imperatives are only logical and psycho- logical consequences of the acknowledgment of this ideal.

The so-called social problem is also an ethical problem, and this gives it its own particular sting. A social problem arises when multiplicity by progressing division of labor, for instance pre- vails in such a degree that individuals are isolated and subjected to a one-sided and mechanical development, or when concentration pre- vails to such a degree that the free development of individuals is checked. There would not be any sting in this problem, if our ideal did not claim that every man shall be treated, not only as a means, or as a part of a machine, but also always as an end in himself. If this ethical principle is not presupposed, social factors may certainly be very interesting objects for science; but such science will be soci- ology, not ethics. There may be a great intellectual interest in watching how inharmonious states develop, and what effects they produce ; but this interest is not an ethical interest, though it may be of great importance from an ethical point of view that there is such an interest.

5. I have already said that the difference between ethics and sociology cannot be said to consist in the fact that ethics has for its object the development of single individuals ; sociology, that of society. There is nothing in the life of individuals which may not be of interest for sociology ; and, on the other hand, ethics is not only individual, but also social. But it cannot be denied that the point of view of ethics causes it to accentuate, in a higher degree than soci- ology has occasion to do, that which is going on in the inner world of