I INTRODUCTORY 7 



sonal ethics apart from the relation of the individual 

 to society, and his book is penetrated throughout with 

 biological and evolutionary suggestions, most of all 

 with the Darwinian struggle for existence. But such 

 suggestions meet us at every hand in modern socio- 

 logical discussions ; nay more, such suggestions it 

 was the professed business of sociology to supple- 

 ment and apply to human life. It is plain, therefore, 

 that sociology and ethics, as sociologists generally 

 conceive of sociology and of ethics, cannot be sepa- 

 rated from each other. Some forms of ethical 

 thought will wander far from the line of treatment 

 proper to us in this essay. But, wherever you have 

 these two things an interpretation of duty as the 

 debt which man, the individual, owes to society ; and 

 secondly, the appeal to phenomenal fact as the only 

 safe or real authority there sociology and ethics 

 must necessarily approach, intertwine, or even co- 

 alesce. And therefore it would mutilate a study of 

 sociological theories, not to include in our review 

 those ethical systems which are plainly of the same 

 house and lineage. 



Every argument proceeds upon certain assump- 

 tions ; and it may be as well to confess at the outset 

 what is to be assumed in the following essay, viz. 

 the trustworthiness of the moral consciousness, or the 

 reality of the distinction between right and wrong. 

 This test will not be formally set aside, except by a 

 few wild thinkers ; but it may be objected that 

 assumptions ought to be vindicated, ought to be 

 justified. Very true ; our test needs justification 

 by philosophy, and we believe that philosophy can 



