680 SOCIAL SCIENCE 



There are intimate connections between it and religion, and relations 

 also between it and physical science. But every branch of human 

 investigation is handicapped so long as it is treated as ancillary to 

 others, and true progress in any field of investigation begins only 

 at the moment when the field is provisionally isolated from the rest. 

 Let the isolation come first, and the connections and relations be 

 sought afterwards; this is at present the great desideratum of the 

 subject of which I speak. 



Ethics is the science of moral judgments. Its office is to examine, 

 to reflect upon, to search out the first principle, the fundamental 

 formula that underlies these moral judgments. The chief moral 

 judgments which it is called to examine, if I may here, in passing, 

 express my own standpoint, are: First, the general judgment that 

 there is such a thing as Tightness and wrongness in conduct; and 

 then, that Tightness in conduct is constituted by the joint pursuit of 

 the individual and the social end, of the end of the self and of the 

 end of the other selves socially related to it. Wanted: a formula 

 which shall satisfactorily express this junction of ends in the same 

 act, which shall, if adopted, inspire society to make the end of the 

 individual its end, and the individual to make the end of society his 

 end. Does the egoistic formula correspond to this requirement? 

 Does altruism, with its tendency to sacrifice the individual to society, 

 correspond to it? It ought to be possible, if the problem is thus 

 isolated, to make progress toward a successful solution. The test of 

 success would be that the formula when found can be shown to sub- 

 sume under itself the moral judgments accepted as valid in society 

 to-day, and can also be used creatively to work out new moral 

 judgments answering to the needs of society as at present consti- 

 tuted, and convincing when translated into action. 



But in thus stating my conception of the scope and function of 

 ethics I have transcended the scope of the topic I had set myself, 

 namely, to raise, and, according to my ability, to answer the question 

 whether the particular social sciences, or sociology in general, can 

 furnish ethical imperatives; to set forth what social science cannot 

 accomplish not only has not, but in the nature of the case can- 

 not; and on the other hand, to estimate justly its past achievements 

 and the worth of what it may be hoped to achieve in the future. 



In closing, I should like to leave this point with you for considera- 

 tion: that as a matter of fact the greatest advances in the ethical 

 progress of mankind have been achieved not by those who were more 

 learned than others in the social science of their day, but by those 

 whose inner life was profound, who searched the depths of their own 

 experience, who were stirred and humbled by the discrepancy which 

 appeared between the ideal of what they conceived ought to be and 

 actual conditions, and whose efforts were directed by the desire in 



