Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/267

 ETHICS AND ITS HISTORY 251

So, in a rapid summary, through the message, through the institutions, and through the spirit of science, ethics, which is the study of the conditions of action with a view to action, has a definite, pertinent reply to its leading question: What ought I to do? or, What ought man to do? As only professional, how- ever, as standing aloof from science, as finding an answer now solely in the extra-natural ideal of duty, and now solely in the equally extra-natural ideal of pleasure, ethics only formulates the question in terms of its natural demands upon the answer, and so reveals the conflict that has made the question from the start and that has made necessary the resort to science; it does not definitely and serviceably give any answer at all. And in the history of ethics, as indeed in the history of human life from any standpoint, one needs especially to remember that class characters make only professions, not wholes of experi- ence, and that history, accordingly, can never be adequate and well-rounded, can never be living, human history, if it confines itself narrowly to a single class or profession, as if this were a whole by itself. Such confinement, such abstraction, by making all that it excludes seem really external, and so, when in any way active upon the objects of direct interest, also arbitrary, has in my opinion done more to give color to the charge of materialism against history than any other one cause. Indeed, just such abstraction is the very essence of materialism; and as a last word, broadening the view perhaps beyond the ordinary con- sciousness of the historian, and seeing history with the eyes of an evolutionist, I would suggest that even the material world can stand only for a special labor, say even a special profession the very important labor or profession of maintaining, relatively to any one side of life, all other sides of life, within the real unity of experience.