RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIAL SCIENCE 669 



surpass competing societies in point of endurance. But whether 

 a society with monogamy imperfectly constituted can outlast 

 societies with lower family systems more perfectly organized, is a 

 question upon which they do not stop to reflect. If existing society, 

 on the way toward perfection, must perish, be it so. If the very 

 fact that it is intermediate between a lower form more perfectly 

 organized and a higher form not yet perfectly organized be the 

 cause of its destruction, let this cause operate to produce its effects. 

 Ideas and institutions do not exist for the sake of a given society, 

 but societies exist for the sake of working out the ideas, and the 

 institutions in which these ideas express themselves.) 



Again, it is said that the monogamic family is the most suitable 

 organ for the transmission of the results of mental and moral civiliza- 

 tion to future generations. It is held to be so because it is the most 

 adequate instrumentality for the cultural development of the married 

 pair themselves through their mutual influence on one another, and 

 also for the development of individuality in the children, and for 

 putting them in possession of a varied and unified culture. But 

 if we hold against this account of what the monogamic family is 

 ideally, or what it might be, a picture of what it is, to how great an 

 extent shall we find that the latter is in contradiction with the former! 

 In how many cases does the close contact of two persons of oppo- 

 site sexes in marriage actually mean the narrowing of horizons, the 

 lowering of standards, mutual accommodation on the part of each 

 to the defects and blindnesses of the other, the abandonment rather 

 than the pursuit of cultural ideals. And so far as the children are 

 concerned, how often are the parents the chief obstacles to the better 

 education of their children; how little fitted, by nature and acquire- 

 ment, are a very large proportion of parents to undertake the difficult 

 task of child nurture and training. How often have pedagogues 

 expressed the conviction that the parents must be educated before 

 the children can be; and out of this vicious circle how shall we escape? 

 The outcome of my remarks is, that the worth of ideas or ideals 

 cannot be determined by their immediate results either in point of 

 survival or in point of cultural results achieved; that ideals must 

 be approximated to because they ought to be; and that as for the 

 results, in the last analysis we must leave the squaring of them, with 

 the ideal demands, to the Power in things whence those disquieting 

 and urgent ideals have come to us. 



I have enlarged on the subject of survival because it is apt to 

 be the final appeal of those who seek to explain the development 

 of human society in terms of natural law, and who for this reason 

 attribute to social science the prerogative of erecting standards and 

 prescribing laws of conduct. Alongside of survival as a test, how- 

 ever, is often mentioned the so-called law of increasing differentiation 



