612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that they ever will be. Your absolute political ethics is therefore 

 an ideal beyond the reach of the real." This is quite true. Never- 

 theless, much as it seems to do so, it does not in the least follow 

 that there is no use for absolute political ethics. The contrary may 

 clearly enough be shown. An analogy will explain the paradox. 



There exists a division of physical science distinguished as 

 abstract mechanics or absolute mechanics absolute in the sense 

 that its propositions are unqualified. It is concerned with statics 

 and dynamics in their pure forms deals with forces and motions 

 considered as free from all interferences resulting from friction, 

 resistances of media, and special properties of matter. If it enun- 

 ciates a law of motion, it recognizes nothing which modifies mani- 

 festation of it. If it formulates the properties of the lever it treats 

 of this assuming it to be perfectly rigid and without thickness 

 an impossible lever. Its theory of the screw imagines the screw 

 to be frictionless ; and in treating of the wedge, absolute incom- 

 pressibility is supposed. Thus its truths are never presented in 

 experience. Even those movements of the heavenly bodies which 

 are deducible from its propositions are always more or less per- 

 turbed ; and on the Earth the inferences to be drawn from them 

 deviate very considerably from the results reached by experiment. 

 Nevertheless this system of ideal mechanics is indispensable for 

 the guidance of real mechanics. The engineer has to deal with its 

 propositions as true in full, before he proceeds to qualify them by 

 taking into account the natures of the materials he uses. The 

 course which a projectile would take if subject only to the pro- 

 pulsive force and the attraction of the Earth must be recognized, 

 though no such course is ever pursued : correction for atmospheric 

 resistance can not else be made. That is to say, though, by em- 

 pirical methods, applied or relative mechanics may be developed 

 to a considerable extent, it can not be highly developed without 

 the aid of absolute mechanics. So is it here. Relative political 

 ethics, or that which deals with right and wrong in public affairs 

 as partially determined by changing circumstances, can not pro- 

 gress without taking into account right and wrong considered 

 apart from changing circumstances can not do without absolute 

 political ethics; the propositions of which, deduced from the con- 

 ditions under which life is carried on in an associated state, take 

 no account of the special circumstances of any particular asso- 

 ciated state. 



And now observe a truth which seems entirely overlooked : 

 namely, that the set of deductions thus arrived at is verified by 

 an immeasurably vast induction, or rather by a great assemblage 

 of vast inductions. For what else are the laws and judicial sys- 

 tems of all civilized nations, and of all societies which have risen 

 above savagery ? What is the meaning of the fact that all 



