462 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
stated, the highest ideal of a moral state is one in which there will exist nothing that can be called moral." That work appeared in 1893, but the idea was more fully elaborated in an article on " Ethical Aspects of Social Science" in the International Journal of Ethics for July 1896, which had for its thesis the same principle as that defended by Roberty, viz., that ethics, in so far as it is a science, is sociology. In the article on "The Mechanics of Society" in the last number of this JOURNAL (page 250), written before the present work had reached my hands, the action of man in subjugating inanimate nature was spoken of as "innocent or unmoral (amoral or anethicat)"
To show that this way of looking at human action in these days of incipient sociology is widespread and a part of the intellectual atmos- phere, let me draw attention to a remarkable article by Antonio Llano in the Philosophical Review for July 1896, entitled " Morality the Last of Dogmas." On page 374 occurs this passage : " As we pass no moral or condemnatory judgments on the bloody struggles of our animal and savage progenitors, reflection might lead us to look with equa- nimity upon the probable amoral (if I may coin this word) condition of our remote descendants." The fact that Mr. Llano supposes that he is using this word for the first time shows that he is not familiar with the sociological discussion of the question and reached the principle inde- pendently and from the standpoint of psychology and philosophy.
Professor Roberty has already gone over the ground of the present volume and of the whole series announced, in a course of lectures delivered at the Institut des Hautes Etudes in the University Nouvelle at Brussels, of which the eminent sociologist, Dr. G. De Greef, is the rector and ruling spirit. Everybody knows that that institution was founded as a revolt from the narrow and reactionary tendencies of the traditional university teaching, which claims to possess all the morality of the age, and stifles all originality. 1 His characterization of this spirit is at once so happy and so refreshing that it ought to be repro- duced in America:
"The scientific world knows and appreciates at its true value this excellent school, which completes and crowns the work of regeneration of the higher university instruction, due to the happy initiative of an elite of noble spirits. Disheartened by the daily and almost universal spectacle in Europe, of sickening pusillanimity, of low jealousies, of mercenary claims to the monopoly of truth, of narrow and sacerdotal
1 Cf. Psychic Factors of Civilization, p. 106.
