Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/431

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 417

of society, as they have been, are, and will be. Sociology, as conceived by Comte and Spencer, may be briefly characterized as an attempt to make the study of human history scientific by applying to it conceptions derived from biology, with such modifi- cations as their new application requires. Granting the substantial correctness of these definitions, and assuming that sociology has attained as much consensus, as to principles, methods, and conclusions, and as much continuity of development as the physical sciences dealing with organic life, and as much power of prevision as Comte hoped for it, we must suppose that the forecast of social consequences furnished by sociology so developed must rightfully exercise a fundamentally important effect on the practical application of general ethical principles or maxims, and the deduction of subordinate rules of conduct from these. But to the further claim that sociology must not merely modify the practical application of ethical principles, but must also deter- mine these, the reply must be made : This is impossible, since sociology, even when dealing with ethical principles, is only concerned with what is, has been, and will be judged, and not with whether it is, has been, and will be trttiy judged — which determination is the specific problem of ethics. If it be urged that the aim of sociology is not merely to ascertain, but also to explain, the variations and changes in social morality, and that this explanation must lie in reducing to general laws the diversity of moral opinions prevalent in various ages and countries, and that these general laws must either coincide or clash with ethical principles, w6 need only to point out in reply that these sociological laws must be so general as to include and explain erroneous moral judgments as well as true moral judgments, and that they cannot, therefore, coincide with ethical principles. Again, it may be asserted that the end of social relationships, as determined by sociology, is the preservation of the social organism, and that the ethical philosopher must accept this and make it also the ethical end; and that by so doing he subordinates ethics to sociology. Several replies are possible here. First, ethics would not so become a branch of sociology, exactly speaking, but rather an art based on the science. Again, this identification of the sociological and the ethical ends is one to which the moralist cannot be driven by the sociologist as such. For the argument that, if the ethical philosopher declines to accept the preservation of the social organism as the ethical end, he places himself in opposition to the process of nature, is only forcible if we introduce a theological signifi- cance into our notion of nature, attributing to it design and authority ; and this intro- duction of theology carries the sociologist beyond the limits of his special science. But, more fundamentally yet, it must be urged that neither of these hypotheses is more than partially true. It is not life simply, but good or desirable life, that is the ethical end ; and the determination of the content of this notion " good " is a task in the dis- charge of which ethics can gain no help from sociology. Nor is the view that morality has been developed under the influence of the struggle for existence among social organisms, as a part of the complex adaptation of such organisms to the conditions of their struggling existence, a probable conjecture as regards more than the earlier stages of its development in prehistoric times. We cannot say of the most signal con- tributions to the progress of morality that they are always decisively preservative of the particular nation by which they are made. Finally it must be urged that there is need that the mutual influence and interpenetration of ideas between ethics and soci- ology be carefully watched and criticised in order not to become a source of confusion at the present critical period. To give an illustration : "A man," it is said, "finds himself a member of a society in certain relations to other human beings. He is son, brother, husband and father, neighbor, citizen. These relations are all facts, and his duties lie in fulfilling the claims that are essential parts of these relations." Now, no doubt these various social relations do demand from the individual a certain recognition. But to maintain that it is an absolute duty to fulfill all such claims is hardly possible. They are vague, varying, and conflicting ; they are sometimes unreasonable ; in short, they do not form a harmonious system, and the study of them as facts does not give a criterion of their validity arid a means of eliminating conflict. In considering which of the demands made upon us by our fellow-men have to be satisfied and which repudi- ated, and, when two conflict, which is to be postponed, we require a system of principles of right conduct which the study of social facts as such cannot alone give, but which it is the business of ethics to give. — H. Sidgwick, in International Journal of Ethics, October, 1899.