Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/252

 236 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the question itself, remember, being a leading one the peculiar answers, so familiar to all students of history, of duty and pleas- ure, or loyalty and personal desire, given, as constantly and as perennially as the question has been asked, by idealism, some- times more characteristically called rigorism, and hedonism.

That duty and pleasure, as moral ideals given in apparent answers to the question of ethics, correspond to the two conflict- ing interests, the old and the new, which have aroused the ques- tion itself, can hardly need any special explanation; but the fact itself is full of significance, as will very speedily appear. First, however, finding in duty the appropriate ideal of conservatism, we must observe several things, and among them that conserva- tism cannot assert itself without becoming at once supernatural- istic. Man cannot, after the manner of the conservative, treat his institutions, the established forms and tenets of his life, as having intrinsic worth, without in just so far ascribing to them a more .than natural authority. No doubt, too, there is a peculiar justice, intensely interesting to anyone studying the logic of his- tory, in the fact that, with important changes and the ensuing assertion of conservativism, the idea of sanctions from another world, always darkly suggestive of something new, of something to come, should get possession of the minds and hearts of men; but, the justice and the logic of it aside, certainly nothing is more pertinent to the conflict of the time. Think but a moment how the doctrine of the divine right of kings did not precede, but grew out of, the conflict between monarchy and democracy in early modern times, and you will have an excellent illustration of the point here under discussion. Conservatism in any form must be dogmatic, and its necessary dogmatism makes it super- naturalistic. Hence its ideal, duty, has always been as if imposed from without, as if having power and right from another world. Moreover, on the other hand, if duty is thus a supernatural visitor, pleasure, the appropriate ideal of radicalism, is infra-natural, carrying its devotee below the bounds of what can be natural to any living creature. Most surely mere pleasure is quite as far from what is natural as abstract duty. " Seek pleasure," as the principle of conduct, is neither more nor less practical than, "Do