Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/542

 528 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

which it is worth while for sociologists to study at present scale up to or down from states. Not ignoring international and trans- national associations, we find it probable that most progress will be made toward ultimate comprehension of the larger whole by limiting investigations pretty closely for a while to these grand divisions of the whole. Enough of the life-process is carried on within the state to make formulation of that process more accurately descriptive of the whole than any formulations which we are likely to reach for a long time by more ambitious gen- eralization.

On the other hand, we have posited the conception that the portion of the life-process which takes place at a given time in a given state is a stage in the series of activities proceeding in that state toward further development ; and we have posited further the conception that these same activities are portions of a whole human life-process in which all states and peoples cooperate toward a more evolved associational process carried on by the whole human family.

Now, in order to make out classifying distinctions between different sorts of association, we have chosen to consider them in their relations up to their fusion with states, and we have chosen to consider states themselves with reference to the ends beyond themselves, or probably we should say with more immediate pro- priety, first, beyond their present selves, and ultimately leading into the wider correlations toward which they function. These ends are presumably given in certain ideals of fitness held by individuals, and known as ethical conceptions. Every state acts consciously or unconsciously toward the realization of some moral situation. We call such a moral situation a civilization. When we reach the stage of reflection, we have certain judg- ments of the more or the less fit civilization. Our own standards of fitness being then necessarily the provisional criteria of judg- ment, what are the marks of low or high, of retarded or advanced, civilization ? We thus enter necessarily upon a critique of morality. What characterizes the state which we pronounce high or low in the ethical scale ? This is not equivalent to a critique of theories of morality, for we have assumed all that, and