Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/539

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 525

the principle of classification for concrete associations must be found in their functional relations to the whole life-process in which they have value. This amounts to the conclusion that the cardinal divisions of associations are ethical.. We do and must assort associations according to the part which they appear to play in the largest whole to which we can trace their relations. 1

The sense in which we use the term "ethical" should be pre- cisely described. We mean to indicate by it those actions which seem to the actors to be performed in response to the demands of a whole to which they regard themselves as accountable ; in contrast with all other activities in which utilities are treated as first and last the concern of the actor alone. The "whole" implicitly regarded in a given case may be the individual or the group self, so conceived as to be considered a more complete or authoritative whole than the actual self. "Ethical" does not here connote a judgment of subjective moral quality. It relates to the range of relations to which actors refer their action, or to which it is conceived as being referred by those who are tracing its tendencies. It distinguishes conduct dictated to individuals by notions of a whole beyond themselves, within which they are parts or incidents, from conduct in which indi- viduals virtually assume that they are the whole.

Applying the above conclusion to states, and referring once more to our formula of the social universal (p. 509), our propo- sition is that, if we are seriously bent on getting nearer to a real sociology of the order of generality which would cover the activities of the leading modern states, we have the task of making out in each case, not the popular shibboleths, not the current moral formulas, but the actual assumptions of social ends which distinguish activities within the countries in question. It becomes, then, a series of questions of fact how elaborate and complex that ethical assumption is in each case. The details in

1 "Wie jeder Mensch in seiner Familie, in seinem nachsten Kreise geschatzt wird nach dem, was er durch seine Personlichkeit, seinen Besitz, seine Leistungen, diesem Kreise ist, so hat zu alien Zeiten die offentliche Meinung die arbeitsteiligen Berufsgruppen und -klassen des ganzen Volkes nach dem gewertet und in ein Rangverhaltnis gebracht, was sie dem Ganzen der Gesellschaft waren oder sind." (ScHMOLLER, Die gesellschaftliche Verfassung der Volkswirtschaft, ester Teil, p. 393.)