through command and punishment, prescription and example. Imitation has been well defined as the motor aspect of sympathy, and sympathy is perhaps the most powerful and persistent factor in moral development. There can be no question that the contents of the moral consciousness in the individual can be shown to be for the most part of social origin. The outcome of such a completely sociological treatment of moral feelings and ideas would be, of course, the recognition of the thoroughgoing relativity of all actual moral feelings and ideas.
And yet, although the method of approach just mentioned is of the utmost value in the study of the facts of morality, both in their existing forms and in their genesis, I would maintain that there is a distinct field for ethics independent of sociology. Sociology is the comprehensive science of the principles or laws[1] of social structure and of its evolution. There is in any well-organized society a minimal framework of institutions on which the continued existence of this society depends. And, on the other hand, inasmuch as a society at any time consists of living individuals in relation to one another, the institutional framework of society is in constant evolution. Sociology investigates the fundamental structure of social institutions and traces out the principles of their mutation, and one may regard the term 'social institutions,' taken in its widest sense, as inclusive of the generally established and accepted principles of action current in a given society. 'Moral principles' are socially recognized standards of action. They are enforced by law and social opinion. They are transmitted by social tradition either in the form of explicit laws or in the more indefinite form of customary social opinion. And ethics, of course, includes amongst its data and problems these socially accepted or moral types of value-judgment. But the study of codified social morality forms only a part and, indeed, I would maintain, the peripheral part of the area of ethical enquiry. Of course, every attitude of an individual living in society has a social aspect. And many, perhaps most, of the actions of individuals are determined by socially valid or moral standards. But
- ↑ I cannot here undertake to discuss in what precise sense the term 'law' should be employed in sociology or social philosophy.
