Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/516

 498 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

change does not mean that men come to be judged as mixtures of good and evil, or of worth and worthlessness, but as in themselves beyond either judgment. The individual has in himself, to be sure, the germs of both characters, which develop according to historical circumstances, stimuli, and judgments in many and various ways. He is originally, and he also remains to a certain degree, the undifferentiated unity of those antitheses. If in many objective social structures the unlimited opposition or unity distinguishes precisely the later stage of development, this is only one of the frequent cases in which the last stage of an evolution reproduces the form of its earliest stage, only in a maturer, more conscious, and more voluntary fashion ; and so they exhibit more clearly, in the similarity of the external phe- nomena, the progress of the essential meaning.

Although antagonism in itself alone does not constitute socialization, no more is it likely to be lacking as a sociological element in the formation of societies (marginal cases being neg- lected); and its function may be extended indefinitely; that is, up to the exclusion of all unifying factors. The scale of relationships thus resulting is also one that may be described from the stand- point of ethical catagories. The latter, however, furnish in general no sufficient point of attachment from which to exhibit completely and without prejudice the sociological element in the phenomena. The judgments of value with which we accom- pany the voluntary actions of individuals produce series which have only a purely accidental relationship to the arrange- ment of their forms in accordance with real criteria. To rep- resent ethics as a species of sociology would deprive it of its profoundest and purest content: the attitude of the soul in and toward itself, which does not at all enter into its external relation- ships ; its religious exercises, which affect only its own weal or woe ; its devotion to the objective values of knowledge, of beauty, of significance of things, which are entirely outside of all alli- ances with other men. The combination of harmonious and hostile relationships, however, allows the sociological and the ethical series to coincide. It begins here with the action of A to the advantage of B ; continues in the action of A for private