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 47 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

since that period. Slavery was long supported, at great loss, on a false economic theory. 1

III. RELATIONS OF ETHICS TO PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY.

Psychology reveals the phenomena of the ethical life in all its elements, just as it deals with all the phenomena of intellect, sensibility, and will ; it shows the order of awakening and devel- opment of the moral sense of obligation, of the commanding ideas of benevolence, justice, and completeness of living. Psy- chology also brings to light the actual beliefs of men In respect to the virtues and duties, in various relations, which are recog- nized by men. All the desires of men the appetites, the aes- thetic cravings, the spiritual aspirations, the economic demands are studied in relation to the central experiences called ethical.

Ethical philosophy seeks the unity of the ethical in the ground of being, the sanctions of the moral sense of oughtness, the ultimate good of beings as defined by hedonism and com- peting systems.

But at the line where these subjective valuations are tested by experience and come into the current of the social life, ethics is dependent on theoretical sociology, as already indicated, for the knowledge of the institutional forms through which the moral beliefs find expression ; and on practical sociology for the concrete means of realization.

With the greatest benevolence no man can be beneficent without knowledge of the actual conditions of realizing satisfac- tions ; and with the finest sense of justice a saint will injure his neighbor in his rights, and all the more remorselessly because he is following his "conscience." The attempt to direct con- duct by the light of uninstructed, though noble, sentiments and beliefs has always made communities feel safer in the hands of strong and shrewd selfish men than in the hands of incompetent philanthropists. If anything is certain in morals, it is that every man is under obligations to know all he can about what he has to do.

1 PAUL LEROY-BEAULIEU, Traitt thiorique et pratique d ' Economic politique, Vol. I PP- 3 4 1 second edition, i8q6.