RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIAL SCIENCE 673 



of industrial development are characterized in some aspects by 

 greater simplicity, while as to the differentiating movement which 

 likewise is taking place, the fear whether it may not prove to be of 

 such a nature as to disrupt society, and by breaking up social unity 

 to destroy civilization, is the very question that most disturbs our 

 peace. 



We have thus completed the first of our tasks. We have exam- 

 ined some of the particular social sciences with a view of ascertaining 

 whether in their special field they are capable of furnishing ethical 

 imperatives, and we have been led to a negative conclusion. We have 

 also, incidentally, fulfilled the second task we had set ourselves, 

 viz., of inquiring whether the general science of society, or sociology, 

 is capable of furnishing such imperatives. Fitness to promote social 

 survival and increasing complexity are, so far as my knowledge of 

 sociological literature goes, the only two definite standards which 

 that science puts at our disposal for the regulation of conduct; we are 

 to work for that kind of religion which will help the survival of the 

 community and which is marked by greater complexity; for that type 

 of the family which corresponds to the same requisites, etc., and it has 

 been my attempt to show that these standards, when applied prac- 

 tically, are found to be unhelpful. In addition to these two tests or 

 standards, however, sociological literature swarms with a multi- 

 tude of other prescriptions which have no demonstrable connection 

 with survival and complexity, and which are drawn from conceptions 

 of the social end not derived by the sociologists themselves from the 

 study of social science at all, but from convictions and prepossessions, 

 which clearly they bring ab initio to the study of social science, and 

 seem to interpret into it rather than to derive from it. Thus Comte, 

 in virtue, doubtless, of his bringing-up and his surroundings, is biased 

 in favor of an hierarchial arrangement of society, and of the supre- 

 macy of a spiritual directorate fashioned on the pattern of the medi- 

 eval Church. Other sociologists regard altruism, or self-sacrifice, as 

 the highest type of social behavior, though sometimes leaving us in 

 doubt whether they regard the happiness which such self-sacrifice is 

 supposed to promote as the chief end to be desired, or whether they 

 regard the giving-up of one's happiness as the chief thing desirable, 

 and the state of society in which self-sacrifice would become the pre- 

 vailing type of conduct as the noblest outcome of evolution. Others 

 make self-realization the end, and regard partial self-sacrifice as sub- 

 ordinate and incidental to self-perfection. Other sociologists frankly 

 express their ideals in terms of quantity and, in the fashion of 

 Bentham, pronounce the greatest happiness of the greatest number to 

 be the social end, although they fail to make it intelligible why the 

 happiness of the greater number should be cogent as an end upon 

 those who happen to belong to the lesser number. Others again, 



