318 THEORY AND ADMINISTRATION 



possible, though it does not and cannot affect this morality. Ethics 

 aims with this to attain internal good or virtue, and is consequently 

 concerned with the ' good will,' as well as with the good conduct 

 externally considered. But it deals with morality only as it is the 

 product of free will, while politics subordinates freedom to the attain- 

 ment of social order." 1 



While substantially correct, there may, however, be room for 

 questioning whether a false impression may not be gained from the 

 above concerning the aim of politics. It is true that political insti- 

 tutions and laws are necessarily limited to the control of external 

 acts. Men cannot be made moral by act of parliament. But the 

 ultimate aim sought or which should be sought by all political powers 

 is that through their influence and assisted by the environment 

 which they create, the highest possible moral life may be lived. In 

 final purpose, then, ethics and politics agree. Only in the instru- 

 mentalities through which they operate do they differ. The one 

 seeks to control human conduct by direct appeals to the individual's 

 reason and conscience; the other, to render these appeals effective 

 by the educational influence of the institutions which it establishes 

 and the order and formal justice which it maintains. 



Thus, indeed, Plato makes politics a part of ethics, while Aristotle 

 declares politics the major science of which ethics constitutes but one 

 division. Despite their differences, both of these positions are based 

 upon the fundamentally true premise that the real object of all 

 inquiries which have to deal with the lives and conduct of men is 

 that a " good life " shall be realized. This is the one bond that 

 unites them all, and, whether we give to ethics or to politics the more 

 comprehensive meaning, or include them both within some wider 

 term, is nothing more than a matter of terminology. 



Political Philosophy and Theology 



No necessary or logical relation exists between political principles 

 and theological speculations. As a matter of historical fact, how- 

 ever, they have often been closely associated. So long as political 

 authority was given a directly divine character, political inquiries 

 were necessarily limited by, and included within, religious theories. 

 Thus the great variety of political theories which have been advanced 

 to explain the relations which church and state bear, or should bear, 

 to one another have in large measure been of a theologico-political 

 character. This problem of church and state, as is well known, 

 was, indeed, the central point around which medieval political 

 speculation centered. Out of this general controversy sprang a 

 host of divergent views regarding religious toleration, the right of 



1 Elements of Ethics, pp. 10, 11. 



