Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/279

 PLEASURE AS ETHICAL STANDARD 265

process of morality is carried forward. What are they ? The very tests which the judge, and the carpenter, and the logician have been using. These, and none other, are the tests in the realm of the moral judgment. It is to close one's inquiry too soon to say that the judge determines the law by precedent. The process would hardly be worth the active form, if it were so simple. The mechanic is one who constructs, not simply imi- tates ; and the scientist, in his laboratory, is not content with what he merely sees. Let the judge be typical of the process. There is almost endless disagreement among authorities. There is a new element in every case. This is so strikingly true that the work of the old doctors of the law who spent their time in deciding every imaginable possible case before it arose in actual society, in order that trial judges might thereby have exhaustive guides for the treatment of every possible case at hand, soon found their services of little use, and forsook their scholastic calling ; for they seemed to themselves to be no match whatever for the world-consciousness in power to mix the details of men's altercations. Confused by conflicting prece- dents, confounded by situations which have never before been adjudged, the court is compelled to make a law for almost every case. What is his guide ? The matter is a serions one ; it must be rightly dealt with. His sole reliance is upon consistency. The breach between authorities must be healed. Unity must come out of their conflict. His judgment must note them and order them. His opinion is made up when he succeeds in har- monizing all the elements involved. They check and balance each other until his judgment reduces them to a harmonious whole. Neither utility nor past effort, though they are one, fixed the value alone. Past efforts, experience, counts for much, possibly most, in his decision ; but it must be expanded to meet the peculiar demands of the new situation. It is impos- sible for him to determine by his feeling, or the feelings of others for that itself is indeterminable ; it is impossible for him to determine by abstract reasoning, for that is not his ; and it is impossible for him to determine by abstract will alone, for that is not to determine. But he, the unity of them all, must