Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/440

426 discovering that even ethical phenomena have their origin in physiological processes." Taking the psychological aspect into account, we may say that the economic motive is the sum of those normal desires to which at any given moment we are giving a preferential attention; while the ethical motive is the sum of those normal desires which at the same given moment we are neglecting, but which will presently assert themselves and divert attention. This broad distinction between economic and ethical motives enables us to discern the ground of the persistent dissatisfaction with utilitarian ethics. Further, when we have discovered that the ethical motive arises as a reaction of the organism upon the organ, of vague feelings en masse upon specific feeling, we have discovered the true source of moral authority, and also the half-superstitious conception of authority which still rules the ordinary mind.

The theories of the extreme left wing of the Hegelian School are instructive in this connection. All institutions which appear to be products of human reason have their origin in a purely material necessity. The economic factor forms the basis of history, evolution is its law, and the strife of the classes, add Marx and Engels, is its motive force. These principles, which form the gospel of the orthodox socialist school, mingled later with those of the positivist school. The eighteenth century witnessed an attempt to apply to ethics and politics the methods of the natural sciences. Unfortunately, those sciences which served as models were almost purely deductive. The errors which resulted are not possible to-day. The latest of the sciences, sociology, is distinguished from the older disciplines by a greater complexity. Like the others, it will find its progress and perfection only in the rigorous employment of induction, and in the elimination of the absolute; so it has been maintained. The fundamental characteristic of the positivist philosophy is to regard all phenomena as subject to invariable natural laws. Sociology is the study of society as a natural phenomenon. The division into a social static and a social dynamic is a happy innovation. These conceptions of Comte gave rise to many subsequent works fruitful in new ideas. Darwin's work gave this movement a lively impulse. According to the modern view, right is nothing else than the specific force of the social organism. The struggle for existence rules the evolution of societies. Institutions are constantly modified, they are essentially relative, and destined to be replaced by others. There can be no guarantee that the onward march of the world is progressive, since progress presupposes the existence of an end, and this is excluded by hypothesis. Lacking the ideas of end and final cause, the philosophy of right loses all fixed orientation. Thus the natural right which the publicists of the eighteenth century opposed, as ideal and perfect, to systems of