134 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
basis of study, and, against Mr. Huxley, is applied to morality. Against Mr. Benjamin Kidd it is argued that morality belongs to a rational order of evolution.
Altruism is not the whole of morality, and yet its omission would be irrational as well as immoral. The institutions of society have value merely as 'means to ethical ends, the well-being of persons. Well-being includes as inseparable components, happiness and virtue. "The ideal of the good has two elements, one of which is primary, the other secondary. The primary element may be best characterized, although with more or less vagueness, as worth ; the secondary element, also with some vagueness, as happiness." Neither element can be more exactly weighed or measured than the other.
Professor Harris deals with these ethical conceptions as developed in the growth of the race, and now given in consciousness. Evolution and morality have a common element, an ideal progressively realized. That which has been produced in fact must have been the final cause of the process. With the metaphysical and theological discussions we do not deal here. They reflect the tendency to regard the Divine Being as ethical, as a moral Father, rather than as an arbitrary Sovereign.
The brief excursions into economics are rather suggestive of pres- ent social tendencies than exhaustive of discussion. The statement (p. 332) that productive industry is divisive and not socializing needs qualification. The conflict of wage- earners with employers, and the division of tasks and competition between workmen or merchants is only one aspect of the relation. The sentence on page 176 will appear painfully inadequate to many students of the labor question: "The serious economic problem is the restriction of production rather than the restriction of population." This will not satisfy the Malthusians who regard the moral restriction of population as one of the conditions of progress. It will not satisfy that large class of observers who believe that while a million men lack the necessities and comforts of life and are willing to work for them it is not "over- production" but imperfect adjustment which is the "serious eco- nomic problem." The relative values of material goods and institu- tions as compared with ideals and morals is well stated (p. 339).
A student of sociology must derive advantage from such a work, chiefly in the formulation and criticism of the ends of action. On the other hand, ethical discussion should gain in distinctness and compre- hensiveness by a careful use of the more accurate and complete analyses
