Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/433



NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 4 I 9

show the connection between them ; but it has confused them, making their study almost impossible. Morality, as an art or a science, ought to be distinguished carefully from the social organization which it conditions, at least as much as it is conditioned by it. Social progress is one thing, and moral progress is another, quite as much as is scientific progress, or aesthetic progress. These latter certainly should be studied by themselves and separately, in spite of the manifest connection which they have with social progress ; and it is the same with moral progress.

But if sociologists have put too much confidence in the biological analogy, and have succeeded in scarcely more than confusing the facts, they certainly have helped to make clear the method of ethics. It can be only the genetic method.

Morality being considered as a natural fact in process of evolution, the funda- mental problem is to determine the origin and development of the fact. To do this it is first of all important to isolate it, to distinguish it carefully from the many and accompanying facts with which it is connected, and especially from the social organization with which for the most part the sociologists tend to confound it. Difficult though it is to trace the evolution of morality through its successive stages, it is not impossible, for the essential thing in morality is the moral ideal, that is, the conception that men have had of the Good (Bien) through the world and in the successive periods of history. In such a historical study of the moral ideal two factors are seen always to have concurred in its formation : these are intelligence and sensibility. Moral progress may be regarded as a function of these two. But among peoples as among individuals, intelligence and sensibility do not keep pace in development, and in this variation we have the raison d'etre of the many variations so evident in morality. Taking things in the large, this double progress is followed, with a pace more or less irregular, agreeing with the general course of civilization, which it conditions at the same time that it is conditioned in turn by it, in such a way that moral progress, which is a function of this double progress, may be considered as having the measure in the progress of civilization, and its actual goal in the moral ideal as conceived by the most advanced nations of modern Europe.

In the analysis of the moral ideal are found three elements : one of the aesthetic order ; one of the logical or rational order ; and one of the sympathetic or altruistic order. In individual perfection there must be courage, temperance, and wisdom ; or, in other words, grandeur, proportion, and order. But these are terms of the esthetic appreciation. In wisdom the logical element of the moral ideal is already implied, but in justice it is the chief factor. Sympathy includes such as alms-giving, assistance in time of suffering, a feeling of solidarity, and is far more stable than mere community of utility.

The aesthetic, rational, and sympathetic elements of morality are found in varying proportions in systems of culture and in individual lives. In Buddhistic India the sympathetic, in Greece the aesthetic, in Rome the rational, element was especially pronounced. Corresponding differences in individuals are too evident to need mention. It is well known also that either of these given elements is judged, not as a thing isolated, but as combined with the other elements and as functioning in the situation. To the artist beauty, to the humanist sympathy, to the jurist justice, becomes the dominating element in morality. In the many combinations possible by the rearrangement among these three elements and their several degrees of emphasis, are to be found all the various forms of obligation from the impulse to relieve suffering, to remorse, and to Kant's categorical im- perative.

The above analysis of the moral ideal into its three elements makes the study of its development quite simple in method, consisting of a study of the evolution of each of the elements. We shall take up first the evolution of the aesthetic element.

If primitive cultures have sought the colossal and the monstrous (extensive magnitude), savages have been charmed by brightness of color and intensity^ of sound (intensive magnitude). Animals, too, are not insensible to such qualities. To the peacock, beauty of plumage is virtue ; to the nightingale, splendor of voice is virtue ; to the primitive man, size and strength are virtue. This same admira-