Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/696

 680 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

DISCUSSION

MR. L. T. HoBHOUSE, 1 speaking from the chair: It may be said that the two points of view the sociological and the ethical are fundamentally opposed to one another; that sociology has to do with what is and has been, and that ethics has to do with what ought to be ; and it does not require much experience of life to know that what ought to be is very seldom the same as what is. But while these things may be very distinct, nevertheless in the actual treatment of the social sciences there is a constant tendency to make that very confusion. I take, for instance, the sad history of economics, in which for seventy years past there has been a constant question as to how far ethical questions ought to be introduced. And we get constant protests from economists who say they are only telling us what are the consequences of certain events, the effects produced by certain conditions, but they are not wishing to express any moral judgment on these effects. But such is human frailty they have never been able to refrain from preaching tacitly, even if they were not preaching consciously. It is impossible to avoid, in the teaching of a social subject, the use of eulogistic or dislogistic terms. One might take a very simple instance from the ordinary usages of economists. You will recol- lect that early economists, in explaining the genesis of interest, refer it to the wages of abstinence which a person received as a reward for accumulating his capital. You will see at once that critics of that view pounced upon the con- ception of wages and abstinence, and said that you are in effect giving a moral justification for the nature of interest which, according to your own account, should be entirely absent from your mind. And, on the whole, I think criti- cism on that point may be justified. That illustrates how it is difficult to keep from ethical judgments in dealing with sociological questions. Surely, it is far better that we should be conscious of this difficulty and take questions of ethics into account instead of doing it unconsciously and apportion to them the share which we deliberately judge they ought to have.

There is a further point that ethics ought legitimately to come into

1 One of the most interesting figures in contemporary English philosophy, Mr. L. T. Hobhouse, promises to loom still larger in the future, for he is still below middle age. His book, The Theory of Knowledge, is notable as the first comprehensive attempt to sum up for English readers post-Kantian episte- mological research and discussion, and is probably the most important English book of its kind since Mill's Logic. His Mind in Evolution is a study in com- parative human and animal psychology, and may be considered as the psycho- logical prolegomena to a large treatise on ethics handled on the comparative and evolutionary method, which he is about to publish. Mr. Hobhouse also illustrates a certain English tradition of combining speculative with practical life, for he alternates his philosophical with political activities. Formerly a Fellow and Tutor in an Oxford college, he has latterly taken some part in practical politics on the Liberal and anti-imperialistic side. He has published two books of political com- plexion, Socialism and the Labor Movement and, quite recently, Democracy and Reaction the latter being an analysis of the reactionary forces and movements in social life, in politics, and in philosophy, during the past two generations, and more particularly during the past decade.