Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/255

 ETHICS AND ITS HISTORY 239

principle we are not now concerned. Sufficient unto the moment is the conclusion that rigorism and hedonism are apologetic in character, and are in consequence, just as much of what has been said already has suggested, necessarily abstract and artifi- cial, impractical and, so far as satisfying ethical interest, alto- gether inadequate, being in themselves, whether singly or collectively, no intelligible indication of what man ought to do. Perhaps their formal abstract character, their common innocence of any positive applicability, reduces to a minimum, or even to zero, the opprobrium of their partisanship and opposition; but they are not on that account answers to the important question, although, as will hereafter appear, taken together they may make a sort of mold, into which the desired answer can be put. They may make a mold ; but as yet we must see this mold as quite with- out content, save for the opposition or tension between the two parts.

And the opposition or tension between the two parts is only the ethical question over again, but defined in terms of the demands which the conditions of its rise and articulation have put upon the answer. The questioner finds himself standing between two principles, whose opposition has made his question; and we may imagine him to say first to the rigorist : " Yes, there is that I ought to do;" and then to the hedonist: "Life must, indeed, bring pleasure, else it is surely not for me; but how does either of these things satisfy my hunger for what is concrete? Your duty and your pleasure are only the formal demands that must be met together and equally before my hunger can be appeased. You say they may not be mingled ; but' I know their mingling is just what my problem is ; and if you have nothing more to offer except a choice of the two things, both of which I must have to really solve my difficulty, then I must simply thank you for telling me so well what my problem is, and look elsewhere for its answer."

With this speech from the ethical inquirer for a minute or two let us leave the field of ethics, and, for the sake of an illustra- tion, turn to that of natural science, which for the time being we may assume to be quite independent. The scientific question