Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/254

240 offers a ground on which a complete scientific view of the world, when the conditions of social life permit, may take root far easier and more securely than on the ground of any dogma whatever. For dogma rests on authority and accordingly has nothing to do with reasons, while materialism has, at least, the good will to listen to rea- sons. On the practical side, too, a development is taking place under our eyes quite analogous to the growth of materialism on the theoretical side. The notion that the moral imperatives were given by authority from above is losing ground constantly. We are in the midst of a transition from the Christian idea that God has resolved to create for men a kingdom of peace and love in the hereafter, to the socialists' idea that men in their own strength may establish a kingdom of justice for all on human ground. Socialism says that the present social order is unjust, not founded on principles of reason, and that it is the laboring class which at no distant date is to raise humanity, materially, spiritually, and morally up to a new and more perfect state. Ethics has two parts: it must first determine whether the given social order is itself good, and then, whether the individual is good. The kind of economic order is of fundamental importance for the moral condition of individuals. The mass of men can be- come good only in an order which bears within itself the assurance of an education to the good. Here lies the ethical significance of socialism. The social order can be moral and morally binding only when it is itself instituted according to the principles of an order for all. Only on a moral order can human morality be built. The aim of the social movement is to establish such a system of legal and moral principles of society as to secure to all men more equal social conditions of existence, culture, and morality than is the case to-day. The first of all moral tasks is not to preach improvement to indi- viduals, but to help create the conditions of a moral order, a ground in which the seeds of such preaching may take root. The social question is the fundamental question of morals.

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The two great political theories, based respectively on absolute authority and absolute individual liberty, have been conciliated by the application of Darwinian methods. Liberty and law are held to be compatible, and to have the same source and justification in the necessity of preserving the social organism. In ethics there is a