Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/337

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

CONDUCTED BY J. D. FORREST AND PAUL MONROE.

Ethical Aspects of Social Science. True moral progress, thus far at least, has been due to only a limited extent to moral teaching, but stands in such relation to material progress as an effect to its cause. The new ethics will have for its aim the increase of human happiness. The ethical is the useful, and all science has an ethical basis. Pleasure and pain furnish the only tests of moral quality. Man cannot wrong the inorganic world ; for sensibility to pain is all that makes a moral question possible. The field of ethics is that of human conduct which is one species of action ; its essence is restraint to prevent collisions among men. Moral progress consists in a series of steps to reduce that friction. A knowledge of psychic and social forces constitutes the basis of the new ethics which must belong to social science. This science, instead of condemning the so-called evil propensities of human nature, deals with them as natural forces, not diminishing, but increasing their effect. When destructive elements are not atavistic, they are the products of cramped social evironment. It is the function of social science to remove these cramping conditions. The sociological, as opposed to the ethical method is to liberate instead of restrain human activity. This positive ethics cannot consume itself, like the negative ethics, which must die when all preventable evil disappears. The dynamic agencies of society will not become unmanagable because they will be directed by reason. The requisite social machinery will be devised for the minimizing of social friction and the utilization of social energy. Lester F. Ward, International Journal of Ethics, July 1896.

Psychology of Artistic Creation.—The purely sociological explanation of artistic production must be rejected, and an explanation stated in bio-psychological terms. It is fallacious to read into earlier stages of any process of development our knowledge of its results. At the beginning of an artistic development there is a feeling of dissatisfaction, which leads to a vague striving after novelty, at first taking only a tentative form. In the end this vague striving satisfies itself in some definite way, and the artistic revolution is completed. Fr. Carstanjen, "Ein Versuch zur Psychologie des künsterlichen Schaffens" -- first paper on " Entwicklungsfaktoren der niederländischen Frührenaissance," Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, Erstes Heft, 1896.

Rights and Duties.—Man at least is a teleological animal, guided by the idea of an end; and the struggle is more for rights than for existence. Consciousness of justice is one of the most important elements in making a people strong. Man struggles partly to live, but much more to live well, which means to develop an infinity of relations with the world. The ethical end is best described as the realization of a rational universe. There is no other injustice than to be balked in efforts towards the full development of capabilities by any other cause than the limitations of nature or the claim of other men to a similar development. When the objects to which we relate ourselves are other human beings, we have a right to certain services from them, they have a corresponding right to services from us. From our standpoint, the former are rights, the latter duties. A claim which any individual possesses may be regarded as conveying with it an obligation upon that individual himself. Rights and duties are two aspects of our powers, but they depend not only on our own powers, but on the nature of the things to which our powers are related. The power of ruling gives no