Sociology And Ethics

SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS THE FACTS OF SOCIAL LIFE AS THE SOURCE OF SOLUTIONS FOR THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PROBLEMS OF ETHICS BY EDWARD GARY HAYES, PH. D., LL. D. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AUTHOR OF AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1921 TO MY THREE SONS These writings of Comte, Spencer, Schaeffle, etc. are of course incomplete attempts, but nevertheless they are the most important supports for an empirical ethics, and indispensable aids for solving the common problems of the special social sciences. Thus if one places the emphasis chiefly upon synthesis or upon the particular investigation of those problems which all of the special social sciences have in common one will not be able to deny the right of this sociology which in fact is only a sort of developed empirical ethics to an established place among the sciences. GUSTAV SCHMOLLER, Grundriss der Allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Religion is an unselfish enthusiasm uniting vast bodies of men in aspiration toward an ideal, and proving the source of heroic virtues. W. E. H. LECKY, History of Rationalism in Europe. What do I care whether all things are composed of atoms, or of similar parts or of fire and earth For is it not enough to know the nature of the good and the evil, and the measures of the desires and the aversions, and also the movements toward things and from them and, using these as rules, to administer the affairs of life, but not to trouble ourselves about the things above us For these things are perhaps incomprehensible to the human mind and if any man should even suppose them to be in the highest degree comprehensible, what then is the profit of them, if they are comprehended And must we not say that those men have needless trouble who assign these things as necessary to the philosophers discourse Fragment attributed to EPICTETUS. PREFACE This essay skirts the entrance to vistas which it does not penetrate. But it suffices to convey the main idea of sociology as the scientific ethics, an idea which I hope will fructify in many minds. Most of the manuscript has lain in a drawer for years other years and the labor of other minds must be expended before the treatment of this theme will be complete. What is here presented is an attempt to lift into its proper prominence one phase of sociology, and of course it cannot at the same time give equal emphasis to its other phases. On pages 31 to 33 there is emphatic warning against going too far toward identifying sociology and ethics. At the same time it is not forgotten that with both Comte and Spencer sociology began as a philosophy of life. And it would cause the writer no distress of mind if in some universities the teaching of sociology should be assigned to the department of philosophy. I am fully aware that the way to secure great vogue for a book upon ethics is to invent a plausible argument, or even one that is not very plausible, for believing that which most people already believe, while, on the other hand, only comparatively few readers are hospitable to any modification in popular beliefs on this subject If some find it hard to tolerate the treatment of ethical problems as within the scope of matter-of-fact science and as belonging to the realm of cause and effect, still I vii viii PREFACE hope that they will nevertheless find tne treatment as awhole not destructive but decidedly constructive. If I am somewhat venturesome in handling the accepted be liefs, it is not for mere love of adventure, nor from dis regard of the values affected, but because I hold the theory that in the end thought helps life more when thought is true than when thinking is prostituted to serve preferences. And even if this theory, or faith, should prove erroneous some may choose to spend their mental life on a cold and arid plateau of unclouded sincerity, rather than in any steaming valley of tropical illusion...