POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 317 



The concrete facts which condition the formation and exercise of 

 ethical ideals are thus preponderantly of a political character. The 

 influence exerted by the commands of the state in creating and mold- 

 ing current conceptions of right and justice is necessarily enormous. 

 The true and desirable relation between law and ethics is, of course, 

 for ethics to dictate the principles and distinctions which the laws 

 embody. As a matter of fact, however, it has always been the case, 

 and always will be the case, that until men become generally moral- 

 ized and intellectualized, legal determinations have been and will be 

 to many persons the source whence they derive their ethical dis- 

 tinctions. 



When, from the formation of ethical conceptions, we turn to the 

 realization of them in practice, the dependence of the ethicist upon 

 the politician becomes in many cases absolute. In so far as ethical 

 speculation is devoted to a search for a justification of the existence, 

 and the manner of existence, of the authority of a political institu- 

 tion, its inquiries are as much political as ethical. So, conversely, 

 in so far as the political philosopher seeks for the moral basis for 

 institutions and authorities, his speculations are as much ethical 

 as political. Thus, while ethics has no concern with the analytical 

 questions of political philosophy, with its teleological problems it is 

 intimately connected. These teleological problems have to deal 

 with the right of the state to be, the legitimate extent to which the 

 freedom of the individual may be restricted by public control, and 

 the aims which a body politic should strive to realize. 



Speaking upon the relation of ethics to politics, Professor Hyslop 

 writes: " For the sake of an effective comparison, politics should 

 be defined as the science of the regulation and restriction of human 

 conduct by law. It thus seeks to determine how certain courses 

 of action may be artificially induced or prevented. It aims by law 

 to establish social order, or a condition of things which the unor- 

 ganized wills of men would not spontaneously produce. It is, there- 

 fore, the science of the artificial limitations of human liberty, in the 

 protection of rights and the regulations of external conduct. On 

 the other hand, ethics is the science of what a man can and ought 

 to do, whether government exists or not. It determines the justice 

 and validity of all political principles, but it does not investigate 

 the means of putting them into force. It is, therefore, concerned 

 with the phenomena of free action, or the voluntary choice of the 

 good. Hence, in contrast with politics, it may be defined as the 

 science of the extension of human liberty or of those conditions under 

 which morality is realized without a resort to civil law. For this 

 reason it is strictly the science of the conditions under which morality 

 becomes internal as well as external. Politics stops short with the 

 attainment of the external good, an order in which free morality is 



