Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/256

 240 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is this : What is nature ? Now, I can hardly say between its lines, but behind its three words, this question, just because of the circumstances in experience that have brought it into expression, involves nothing more nor less than the problem of finding some- thing that is both a thing and a law, both substantial and ideal. The question raises the issue of nature's law, presupposing her abstract lawfulness ; and of her substance, presupposing from the start her substantiality ; so that, as was said, the real difficulty to be met is to determine what nature is as both law and substance. In other words, the distinction between law and substance, or mind and matter, is exactly like that between duty and pleasure; a distinction, in the first place, arising with, or involved in, the putting of the question; and, in the second place, both showing the question to be a very real one, and marking the demands neces- sarily imposed upon the answer. Can a mere theory or a mere formula, however high or strong mathematically, answer the question? Or can a brute force answer the question? No; the only acceptable answer lies in something concrete that is both law and force; say, for example, in a machine, in an effective application of the theoretical to the physical and substantial. The method of science today so dependent on experimentation and on the mechanical devices of experimenta- tion, and in this dependence so incapable of confining itself within its laboratories, its successful applications there passing out into practical life shows this very clearly. Once more, then, like the case of science is the case of ethics. As the real solution of the scientific problem must lie in something concrete that is both law and substance, so the real solution of the ethical problem must lie and in the past always has lain, in something concrete uniting both duty and pleasure, satisfying the demand of one for order in life, and of the other for vital interest and delight.

Now, what may this something concrete, this veritable summum bonum of the ethical consciousness, be? How may inquiring man attain to it? How in the past has he attained to it? These are now our queries. Rigorism and hedonism having been weighed in the balance and, except for their part in formu- lating the ethical problem, found wanting, we must ourselves