Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/263

 ETHICS AND ITS HISTORY 247

science for something that is both substantial and ideal, both a thing and a law, was referred to, and the suggestion was then made that this demand was always answered in a machine, that is, in an efficient application of the theoretical the looking to the physical and substantial the leaping. Now, such a machine has many names in human life, depending on the par- ticular relations it may assume. Such a machine is anything that is practically serviceable or useful to the maintenance of life's activities. Allowing a certain amount of abstraction, which any particular relation, indeed, always implies, we may see it in some subjective or in some objective form, or again we may see it as directly a utility of a personal life or as a social utility. Thus, socially, when viewed subjectively that is, with reference to the standpoint of science, or of any other profession for that matter it is an established method, or the accepted instruments, of observation and expression; and when viewed objectively, it is the instituted life as a whole, as the total social environ- ment of the different professional activities; while, personally, when viewed subjectively, it. is a developed habit, even what we sometimes call a character, or the immediate conditions and instruments of personal life, including peculiarities of dress, lan- guage, and the like, which are so much more truly subjective than objective; and, when viewed objectively, it is, first, the profes- sional life, in which as member of a class the individual has his more or less mechanical part, and then the outer environment as a whole. Under whatever name or form it appears, however, it certainly stands for something concrete, for something that is as concrete as life and the conditions of life; and in bringing both order and freedom into natural human activity it, in just so far, meets the two demands of the question of ethics. It both is satisfying and, because experimental or mediative, is an earnest of something yet more satisfying. Since life began, thanks to its habit of both looking and trying before leaping, no one of the instruments of its activity has failed to lead to a worthier, more efficient exemplar of itself ; and a life with instru- ments that have thus had part in their own making, and that