INTRODUCTORY 



seeks to reduce social well-being to a problem in science, 

 in analogy as far as may be to physical science and in 

 close connection with it, there is another school, not less 

 attached to a doctrine of corporate well or ill, which 

 finds the highest authority in regard to human conduct 

 in metaphysics. 



Fourthly : we might speak of the relation of 

 sociology to ethics. But here the floods threaten to 

 break loose and drown us. Here we come face to face 

 with the question already mentioned the question of 

 the transition from science to art; from noting how 

 things happen to declaring how they ought to happen. 

 Without enlarging further upon that topic at this stage 

 in our discussion, we may at least call attention to the 

 fact that historically there has been a very close kinship 

 between sociology and ethics. Their problem is almost, 

 if not altogether, the same ; the answer formulated is 

 sometimes labelled " sociology," at other times " ethics," 

 as on shipboard the jam is sometimes described as 

 raspberry, sometimes as plum, sometimes, it may be, 

 as guava, yet in all you taste the monotonous flavour 

 of apple, or of burnt sugar. Not less alike to 

 each other are evolutionary ethics and evolutionary 

 sociology. Thus to anticipate for a moment sociology 

 was originally formulated by Comte as the true guide to 

 conduct, the new authority, destined to supersede both 

 ethics and religion. He modified this position in later 

 days, as we shall see, but only within limits, and at the 

 outset it was announced as we have given it. Sociology 

 offered to guide man with the help of biology ; society 

 was an organism ; man was a member in the organism ; 

 a part, not the whole ; essentially dependent on the 

 whole, and bound to serve its interests. This concep- 

 tion reappears in Mr. Spencer ; he works out its 



