MONISM 



future must be reducible to the laws of biology, and 

 especially of evolution. 



The great importance that attaches to the new science 

 of sociology is due to its close relations to theoretical 

 anthropology and psychology on the one hand, and to 

 practical politics and law on the other. When we take 

 it in the wider sense, human sociology joins on to that 

 of the nearest mammals. The family life, marriage, 

 and care of the young in the mammals, the formation of 

 herds in the carnivora and ungulates and of troops in 

 the social apes, lead on to the looser associations of 

 savages and barbarians, and from these to the begin- 

 nings of civilization. The history of these associations 

 is connected with the social rules that govern the inter- 

 course of smaller and larger communities. In the bio- 

 logical reduction of social rules to the natural laws of 

 heredity and adaptation, dynamic sociology (as Lester 

 Ward has called it) proceeds on purely monistic lines, 

 while in social intercourse itself we still find a good deal 

 of dualism. How Uttle truth and nature count for in 

 our cultured society, how much hypocrisy and insin- 

 cerity have to do with social rules, has been well shown 

 by Max Nordau in his Conventional Lies of Civilization. 



Politics is closely connected with sociology on the one 

 hand and law on the other. As internal politics it con- 

 trols the organization of the state by a constitution; 

 as external or foreign politics it directs the relations of 

 states to each other. In my opinion, pure reason should 

 prevail in both departments ; the relations of the citizens 

 to each other and to the whole should be regulated by 

 the same ethical principles that we recognize in personal 

 intercourse. We are, unfortunately, very far 'from this 

 ideal in the life of a modern state. Brutal egoism rules 

 in foreign politics; every nation thinks only of its own 

 advantage, and furthers it with all its military and 

 other resources. Domestic politics is still largely di- 



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