RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIAL SCIENCE 665 



and individual conduct. In the endeavor to make good this position, 

 I shall first apply a practical test to some of the particular social 

 sciences and inquire whether, for instance, the study of the past 

 development of the human family affords us a clue to the type of the 

 family which we should endeavor to realize in the future, or whether 

 the study of the past development of industrial society affords a clue 

 to the desirable constitution of industrial society. I shall next apply 

 the same test to the general science of society, or sociology, and inquire 

 whether it has discovered general laws which we can utilize in every 

 department of social improvement. Thirdly, I shall subject to a 

 brief criticism the fundamental notion of scientific law itself, with a 

 view to ascertaining whether itf can be applied, without radical 

 qualification, to the domain of human conduct, so as to include the 

 uniformities which we discover in the social life of men. 



To begin with the subject of the family. We have been accustomed 

 to regard the family as the sanctuary of civilization, through which 

 all those interests that make life worth living are perpetuated from 

 generation to generation. And yet the family is actually changing 

 under our very eyes, and is bound to some extent to alter its char- 

 acter. In what direction shall we permit it or help it to do so? 

 What principles or point of view shall we adopt in regard to it? 

 Shall we, for instance, prohibit divorce altogether? Shall we adopt 

 the ideas of those who hold that when love ceases, that is, the thing 

 they call by that name, marriage should cease? Or shall we take 

 the ground that the monogamic institution has never yet disclosed 

 its highest potentialities? Shall we endeavor to develop it further, 

 but in such ways as to secure the more perfect manifestation of the 

 idea underlying it, admitting the necessity of change, but insisting 

 that change must be in the direction of greater stringency rather 

 than in that of greater looseness? Or shall we take the side of the 

 extremists, and advocate the dissolution of the family and the sub- 

 stitution of some such arrangement as is contemplated in Plato's 

 Republic? Now can the branch of social science which is occupied 

 with the study of the family help us in deciding the course w r hich 

 we ought to take? The researches of Bachofen, of McClennan, of 

 Tylor,or Morgan, and of the others are of absorbing interest. They 

 have widely extended our comprehension of the facts of social devel- 

 opment. They have taught us that the monogamic family, which 

 we had regarded as fixed and unalterable from the time of the first 

 man and woman, has been the product of growth like every other 

 social institution. They have acquainted us with types of domes- 

 ticity and systems of consanguinity, of which, a generation or two 

 ago, we had not even an inkling. But how does all this knowledge, 

 interesting indeed, despite the many links that are still missing, the 

 many customs and social arrangements that are still obscure, bear 



