B J? Xtbe mnlverslt^ ot Cbicaao UC-NRLF B 3 ^2fi 2fi3 THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS A DISSERTATION SUBLflTTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY CLARENCE EDWIN AYRES Philosophic Studies, No. 8 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1918 \ 1^ k Zbc TUnipersitp of Cbicaoo *^ THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY CLARENCE EDWIN AYRES Philosophic Studies, No. 8 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS p CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1918 Copyright 1918 By The University of Chicago All Rights Reserved Published November 191 8 Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicaeo, ifliDois, U.S.A. PREFACE A study of the relation between the problems of ethics and economics must have its roots in the material, social, and intellect- ual environment from which it springs. In this respect it is, like everything else in the world, a part of the evolutionary process. Whatever conclusions a man may reach on this or any other sub- ject, he may be sure of one thing — that those conclusions were not attained "independently " of the intellectual influences under which fortune has placed him. If he would make his ideas clear to other people, therefore, a man ought to make the discussion of those streams of thought from which he has drawn those ideas a part of the exposition of his own particular conclusions; for if he does this, his readers, already familiar with the general movements of thought, can follow his individual excursion naturally and easily. If, on the other hand, a man prefaces his remarks with a dis- cussion of some other things, from which he thinks he can lead more logically to the statement of his theories, he not only endangers the clearness of his exposition but even puts himself in the ridiculous position of trying to improve upon nature. Like the schoolgirl who wrote, "Newton discovered three very good laws which it would be well for all of us to follow," he seems to say: "This idea of mine must have had its source in some earlier speculation ; there- fore I will find for it as worthy a source as I can."' The ideas which were the real cause of the direction one's think- ing has taken are obviously a more fitting introduction to the state- ment of the results of that thinking than any others, however authoritative or venerable, could possibly be. The present study of the relationship between ethics and economics has grown out of an attempt to. understand the functions of those sciences which was inspired by my first teacher of philosophy, President Alexander ]Meiklejohn, and' has been chiefly guided during the intervening ' Preferably, for the philosopher, in Plato and Aristotle. V 4G593.L vi PREFACE years by his friendly, though ruthless, criticism. Hence I think that I can develop my present notion of the complementary nature of those functions both more clearly and more sincerely through a preliminary exposition of what I myself conceive the functions of ethics and of economics to be than through the usual critical dis- cussion of the opinions of other and more authoritative writers on the relation of ethics to economics. But although clearness and 'sincerity are sufficiently important considerations to determine the form which this paper will take, it is comforting to know that in this particular case no other course is open than the one which has already been indicated; for if one were to commence a study of this sort with a careful critical survey of the "field," intent upon making this theory of the relation between ethics and economics seem to evolve from other men's ideas of that relation, that survey of the current theories would either be a mere anthology or it would be an analysis of the concep- tions of ethics and economics of which the relation theories are particular manifestations. And in this case the introductory inves- tigation would be nothing more nor less than a study of the nature of ethics and economics carried on under the mask of a study of current views of the relationship. Thus, for instance, the most significant feature of the notions of this relationship held by the school of "value philosophers" is that they are making the marginal utility economics the base for all their operations. Revolting from von Wieser's idealization of economics as the complete science of value,^ they have proceeded not only to make ethics " ein Zweig der allgemeinen Werttheorie "^ of which eco- nomics is another branch, but have even made this value philosophy a sort of universal marginal analysis, and thus have marginalized ethics.^ Hence a discussion of the relation theory implicit in the German-American value philosophy reduces itself to a discussion of the marginal utility conception of economics and of the notion that ethics is a metaphysics of "value." ' See Perry, "Economic Values and Moral Values," Quarterly Journal of Econom- ics, XXX, 445; also Urban, Valuation, p. 3. * C. von Ehrenfels, System der Werttkeorie, II, 6. 3 See Urban, op. cil., pp. 328 ff.; also Ehrenfels, op. cil., Book II, chap. iii. PREFACE vii Similarly, it is not possible to understand Croce's theory that "the individuals who seem to be merely economic seem to be also moral, and inversely moral institutions are also economic, and economic moral,"' except through a recognition of its central feature — Croce's distinction between ethical and economic activity. For since Croce makes the field of economics include all activity which proceeds toward individual ends, and since he excludes from ethics all that does not seek a universal end,^ "we cannot fail to recognize" that Croce has put into the economic form of practical activity — "the judgment of convenience"^ — all the content of both economic and moral affairs as we understand them. Croce's "moral" life is so. dehumanized as to belong in quite another world of discourse from the morality with which this paper deals. There- fore the connection with his conception of the relation of the moral to the economic could be made only through a careful study of the differences between his notions of economic and moral problems and those which the writer holds. The same thing is true of Fite's peculiar view of the relation of economic and moral problems. Any attempt to deal with it becomes at once a discussion of the nature of economic and ethical problems and theories. Fite's proposition, that "the root of all the differences between the moral world and the economic world 'lies' in this distinction of the more intimate and more distant relations,"'' is clearly an outcrop of his conception of the nature of the economic and moral organization of society. The clue to this is to be found in his identification of "economic" with the economy of the nineteenth century and the theory which it produced . " All that apparatus of exchange which constitutes what we call an economic world and supplies the material for a science of economics, is distinctively a feature of modern commerce. "^ For Fite, therefore, the economic world is a world that is here, and economic theory is essentially given. Economic problems are ' B. Croce, Philosophy of the Practical (English translation), p. 311. ^ Ibid., p. 313. •s Ibid., p. 316. ^ Warner Fite, "Moral Valuations and Economic Laws," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method, XIV, 10. 5 Ibid., p. 14. viii PREFACE limited to the operation of the system aheady taken for granted. And since the economic order is an automatic machine propelled by the impersonal forces of competition, the field of the moral judg- ment must be that of the personal life — after business hours. So to question Fite's relation theory is really to question his whole con- ception of the field of economics and ethics. Is the economic order really petrified, or is it so susceptible to genetic influences that every economic act entails problems of the effects upon the social order, problems of institutional readjustment, problems of progress toward an ideal ? Thus the relation between Fite's theory and the writer's can be traced only through the larger disagreements, in- volving "the fundamental nature of the universe."^ It is not necessary to multiply examples; it is already clear that a study of the logical differences between this and other theories of the relation of ethics and economics must necessarily be an analysis of the underlying conceptions of the nature and function of those sciences. Since, therefore, my ideas must find their logical basis in a dis- cussion of the conceptions of ethics and economics between which some relationship is to be imputed, and since they are a concrete expression of the notions of ethics and economics to which I have come, under the influence of Professor James H. Tufts and Professor Walton H. Hamilton, I am sure that the whole paper will be much more clear and straightforward if its conclusions are shown to be the direct development of the social and intellectual forces which have produced those movements. Waiving all claim to originality beyond that of clear exposition, I shall endeavor to make my ideas of the nature of the relationship between the problems of ethics and economics appear to the reader — as they do to me — to be only the explicit recognition of the re- lation between these sciences which is already implicit in the recent developments of ethical and economic thinking. C. E. A. ' W. H. Hamilton, "Economic Theory and Social Reform," Journal of Political Economy, XXIII, 562. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Function and Problems of Ethical Theory . . . . i II. The Function and Problems of Economic Theory .... 24 III. Ethics and Economics: A Study est the Definition of Two Sciences 46 CHAPTER I THE FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY If the content of the science of ethics is assumed to be deter- mined by the treatises of ethicists, then the history of ethics is the history of a dualism. For practically all the work which has been done in ethics up to the present time has been done simultaneously in two fields and upon two problems. From the very first ethics has attempted, on the one hand, to give a causal explanation of moral phenomena and, on the other hand, to propound a theory of what things are good and what acts right. Doubtless these two problems are still indistinguishable from one another in the minds of many students of ethics. But the difficulty of distinguishing between them does not lie in an external identity. So far as their external aspects are concerned, the analysis of the moral consciousness, the examination of the moral judgment, -the determination of the nature of conscience and of duty — ■ these problems, or, rather, this problem, is clearly enough a different thing from the formulation of rules of conduct and the definition of a moral ideal. Formally speaking, the analysis of the moral judg- ment is a description of what is, while the formulation of the goal of right living is a description of what ought to be. The reason for the assumed indistinguishability of these two problems lies beneath the surface differences in the relation which has always been supposed to exist between their answers. The fundamental postulate of ethical thinking from earliest times to the twentieth century has been the proposition that the only source of moral guidance and moral progress is the study of the phenomena of the moral judgment. The major undeclared assumption of practically all ethicists up to modern times has been the belief that the answer to the question, "What ought I to do?" is to be found only in a theological, or metaphysical, or psychological analysis of the process to which the word "ought" refers. ;',i ; ;/' ■/RELAttONSRlP HETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS As a result, however, of the gradual realization to which ethics came at the end of the last century, of the cosmic extent and com- plexity of the moral problem, a grave crisis has overtaken the science. We are today in the process of bringing the tacit assump- tion of the dependence of moral doctrine upon metaphysico-psycho- logical speculation into the light of ruthless criticism. The magnitude of the issues of this crisis can be appreciated • properly only in a historical study of ethical methodology; but such a study can only be indicated in this paper, since, if it were not limited to a mere sketch of a single period, its proportions and im- portance would entirely subordinate the purpose for which this interpretation of the recent history of ethics has been made. For that purpose is determined by the future rather than by the past methodology of ethics. If our suspicions of the practical efficacy of the analysis of moral consciousness should appear to be well founded, and if, during the next decade, they should be heightened and jus- tified, then that field will have to be definitely abandoned by stu- dents of morals. The attempt to reduce the life of the individual and of society to some sort of moral order — to make life more worth living — will begin, not with a brief for the rationality of conscience or for the instinctiveness of moral reactions, but rather with a sur- vey of the conditions of social life. In order to put more meaning into human existence, to make of it a more orderly and less futile thing than it has ever been, we shall try first to understand the i, meaning of the life we are now leading. If this paper can indicate the relation between this undertaking and the more specific investi- -jgation with which the economist is engaged, it will have defined certainly not the whole methodology of the new ethics, but at least one small corner of it. II The three great ethical treatises of the later nineteenth century contained little augury of the approaching crisis in ethical theory. But in so far as they carried the traditional types of ethical specu- lation to a higher degree of refinement than had ever been reached before, they constituted one of the important causes of the revul- sion against the traditional ethics. The very barrenness of work so FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY 3 monumental in scope as that of Sidgwick, Green, and Martineau con- tributed largely to the formulation of a new ethical methodology. Sidgwick recognizes the dual nature of ethical inquiry at the very outset of his book. "I prefer to consider Ethics as the science or study of what ought to be, " he says.' This is a clear statement of the problem of human welfare; if this is true, it is the business of ethics to construct a system of moral precepts which shall define the good and the right. One cannot restrain a smile on finding that the sentence following the one quoted above is the author's apology for the fact that ethics — and his book — "consist, to a great extent, of a psychological discussion as to the 'nature of the moral fac- ulty.'"^ The answer to this paradox seems to Sidgwick to be somewhat as follows : "We are generally agreed that reasonable conduct in any case has to be determined on principles";^ there are many different "principles" which the common man may make the basis of his conception of right and wrong; "the common sense of men cannot acquiesce in conflicting principles";'' therefore it is the ethicist's business to determine by a critical examination which "principle" is the correct one. Consequently the book is to be a discussion of "methods of ethics," by virtue of the assumption, explicitly stated as a matter of "general agreement," that moral guidance can be afforded only by a "principle," i.e., a description of the "nature of the moral faculty. "^ The author even goes so far as to deny definitely any intention of supplying "a set of rules for conduct."^ At the same time the criterion according to which the "methods of ethics" are judged is their fruitfulness in "rules for conduct." This is fair enough, in view of the major assumption that principles of analysis of moral phenomena are the source of every moral precept. Empirical hedonism fails because, even though one believes that morality consists in each individual's striving to attain a maximum of happiness for himself,' one can draw no practical references from ■ Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (4th ed.), p. 4. ^ Ibid. 5 Ibid., pp. 6-14. 3 Ibid., p. 5. 6 Ibid., p. 14. * Ibid. 7 Ibid., Book II, chap. i. 4 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS that proposition on account of the incommensurability of pleasure.^ The attempts to squeeze water from the hedonistic stone by aban- doning the calculus of pleasures for an objective estimate of the sources of pleasure are also without result. The common-sense esti- mates of the sources of pleasure are not sufficiently stable ;^ the claim that happiness varies with attention to duty is not borne out by the facts ;^ and no scientific statement of the causes of pleasure and pain can supply the detailed information which a moral situation demands.'' Therefore, concludes Sidgwick, hedonism is a failure. Intuitionism, the second "method of ethics," seems to Sidgwick to be a theory "that we have the power of seeing clearly that certain kinds of action are right and reasonable in themselves, apart from their consequences " ;s that is, it is a different theory of the "nature of the moral faculty." And Sidgwick tests its validity just as he does that of egoism, by the method prescribed by the assumption that if "a set of rules for conduct" cannot be deduced from the theory, then the latter is incorrect. If the major premise of intuitionism is true, then moral in- tuitions must either be heterogeneous and contradictory or organ- ized around a set of intuitively determined moral axioms. Such formulas are not difficult to find, but they are usually deficient in clearness and precision.^ In order to raise these axioms by reflec- tion to a higher degree of precision than they assume in common thought, Sidgwick undertakes an analysis of them through a hun- dred and fifteen pages,^ as a result of which he concludes that they are hopelessly deficient in clearness and precision, in self-evidence, in mutual consistency, and in universality of acceptance.* Still, says Sidgwick, there are certain moral principles, such as prudence, justice, and benevolence, which are intuitively known.' In particular, the intuition establishes the principle of rational benevolence. The utilitarian theory of moral consciousness is not logically complete without the postulate of an intuitive principle of ' Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (4th ed.), chaps, ii-iii. ' Ibid., chap. iv. ^ Ibid., pp. 214-15. 3 Ibid., chap. v. 7 Ibid., pp. 216-331. ^/6i(/., chap. vi. * /i/tf., Book III, chap. xi. 5 Ibid., p. 201. 9 Ibid., chap. xiii. FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY 5 benevolence/ nor can it otherwise meet the criticisms of intuition- ism and egoism.^ It is obvious that the crux of Sidgwick's ethics must be his demonstration that utiHtarianism, reinforced by an intuitional prin- ciple of rational benevolence, is an explanation of the moral life from which something positive may be inferred. But this demon- stration fails to materialize. The author contents himself with showing in one long chapter that the moral dicta of common sense have a large flavor of utilitarianism in them. The moral conduct of the common man — the exercise of the "moral sense" of popular belief — is unconsciously utilitarian.^ Of course it would be easy to assume that the extreme compatibility of the utiUtarian explana- tion with the facts of common-sense morality indicates that the latter has the utilitarian explanation of moral phenomena as its source. But apart from the strain which such a proposition would place upon the credulity of the critic, this theory would still have to encounter the facts of the unclearness and inconsistency of current moral precepts. Sidg^vick sees this difficulty and concludes "that we cannot take the moral rules of Common Sense as expressing the consensus of competent judges, up to the present time, as to the kind of conduct which is likely to produce the greatest amount of happiness on the whole."'* But the only alternative is to show that out of the utilitarian theory there can be deduced a "rule of conduct" a priori. But Sidgwick is too sane a man to believe that such a thing is possible. He says: I hold that the utilitarian, in the existing state of our knowledge, cannot possibly construct a morality de novo either for man as he is (abstracting his morality), or for man as he ought to be. He must start, speaking broadly, with the existing morahty as a part of that order; and in deciding the question whether any divergence from the code is to be recommended, must consider chiefly the immediate consequences of such divergence, upon a society in which such a code is conceived generally to subsist. s But what sort of consequences should be observed ? How should the consequences be calculated, since pleasures are incommen- surable ? There is no answer to these questions^ — nothing but the ' Ibid., chap, xiii; Book IV, chap. i. ^ Ibid., chap. iii. 5 Ibid., p. 469. ^ Ibid., chap. ii. * Ibid., p. 462. * Ibid., p. 472. 6 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS bare conviction that the thing can be done. " No doubt a thought- ful and well-instructed Utilitarian may see dimly a certain way ahead."' And so the study of Methods of Ethics ends as it began, with the unsupported assumption that in some inexplicable way the guidance of human conduct toward the good and the right has been advanced by the decision that the moral consciousness of man works thus and not so. The task is begun by virtue of an alleged "general agree- ment" that conduct is determined by the principles in terms of which moral behavior is explained, and it is finished with " no doubt " that a man well instructed in the "rational benevolence" theory of utilitarianism may somehow make some progress. At the very end of the book, however, there is a section which hints very strongly at the course which ethics has followed in recent years. By what methods can a man ascertain the particular modi- fications of positive morality which it would be practically expedient to attempt to introduce? Empirical hedonism, says Sidgwick, faulty as it is, seems the only method — "at least until the science of Sociology shall have been really constructed. ' '^ To be sure he confesses later that even the development of the social sciences will not solve the problem of the subordination of values — that if utilitarianism means anything such a problem must remain a hedonistic calculus.-^ Of course it was hardly to be expected that the author of a profound exposition of the theory of utihty should see that the problem of the relative importance of values is no less a social problem than that of the recognition of new and more complex social values. Yet it is very significant that Sidgwick saw already that the ethics of the future was to be much more a study of the social order and much less an examination of the moral life of the individual. Ill When the introduction to Green's Prolegomena to Ethics is examined for vestiges of the assumption of the fruitfulness of a dual methodology in ethics, its similarity to the first chapter of Methods of Ethics is very striking. Green, like Sidgwick, explicitly recog- ' Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (4th ed.), p. 469. » Ibid., p. 471. ^ Ibid., p. 474. FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY 7 nizes the dual task which has been traditionally assigned to ethics. "It has generally been expected of a moralist that he should explain not only how men do act (i.e., in making moral judgments) but how they should act. '" But moral philosophy has fallen into dis- repute because it has had "no interest for the imagination and no power over the heart. "^ It has become a natural science, seeking to explain causally the facts of moral life.^ But in so far as ethical speculation has been reduced to a natural science, the "practical or preceptive" part of ethics has become obsolete. Thus utilitarian- ism, "instead of telling men of a greatest sum of pleasures which they ought to seek, and which by acting in the light of a true insight they may attain, .... will rather set itself to show how the phraseology of 'ought' and 'ought not,' the belief in a good attain- able by all, the consciousness of something that should be though it is not, may according to this philosophy be accounted for.""* Yet with such a clear insight into the futility of one analysis of moral consciousness, Green announces his intention of embarking upon the same voyage, though in a different ship. The Prolegomena is to be a metaphysical analysis of the fundamental nature of the cosmos, for the purpose of determining whether there is in man's being a principle which "consists in the consciousness of a moral ideal and the determination of human action thereby. "^ A complete discussion of the metaphysical basis of Green's ethics would contribute nothing to this examination of the assump- tion of the fruitfulness of such a study. There is, in the individual consciousness, a reproduction of the universal and eternal con- sciousness, which is contemplated by the individual as the image of his own perfection. Virtue is the devotion of the moral man to the realization in his own life of this perfection, which, in turn, con- sists in the complete dedication of human endeavor to this self- realization.^ This statement of Green's theory is, of course, a piece of cyclical reasoning of small diameter ; little moral guidance could be wrung ' T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (3d ed.), p. 9. 'Ibid., p. 4. ^ Ibid., p. 11. 2 Ibid., pp. 4-10. * Ibid., p. 309. * Ibid., pp. 9-10. 8 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS from such an ethics. The statement may be unjust, yet Green did not actually make any practical deductions from his ethics which could not as well be associated with this resume. Green recog- nized that he was in difficulties' and set himself in the fourth book to the specific task of justifying his own work. First he decided that in the consideration of what ought to be done only motives need be taken account of, as a consideration of motives includes a consideration of effects.^ ''The actions which ought to be done, are actions expressive of a good will, in the sense that they represent a character of which the dominant interest is in conduct contributory to the perfection of mankind, in doing that which so contributes for the sake of doing it." Still there is the problem, still recognized by Green,^ whether an inquiry into the motives of an act even by the doer himself can achieve "either truer views of what ought to be done, or a better disposition to do it." As a matter of fact Green was logically consistent enough to see that, regardless of the conscientiousness with which a man examines his own motives, "he will not for doing so, directly at any rate, be the better judge of what he should do, so far as the judgment de- pends on correct information or inference as to matters of fact, or on a correct analysis of circumstances. But a man's doubts as to his own conduct may be of a kind which such information and analysis are principally needed to resolve."'' But he attempted to extricate himself from this difficulty by showing that "it is a suffi- cient spring for the endeavor after a higher goodness that I should be ashamed of my selfishness, indolence, or impatience, without being ashamed also of my ignorance and want of foresight."^ This seems rather like the assertion that it makes no difference whether you know what you are doing, or even why you do it, so long as you do it with due humility and with good- will to all. This is not a very fruitful doctrine in a society like ours. Green saw that still he had not touched the practical problem — ^and so had not justified the assumption on the basis of which the whole task was undertaken. "It remains to be asked," he says at the end of the ' T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (3d ed.), pp. 313-14. 'Ibid., pp. 291-92. *Ibid., pp. 331 ff. 3 Ibid., p. 323. 5 Ibid., p. 334. FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY g book,' "by what rule effort is to be guided, which we suppose the idea of a possible human perfection thus to initiate." Unless this problem can be solved "it would seem that our theory of the basis of morality, though its adoption might save some speculative per- sons from that distrust of their own conscience to which Hedonism would naturally lead them, can be of no further practical value. "^ And in the end Green gave the game away, saving himself as best he could by the reiteration of his still unjustified assumption in the assertion that "we all recognize virtues which carry in them- selves unfulfilled possibilities, "^ and by the distinction, which served him in tight places several times, between motives and effects. " No theory whatever of the ' Summum Bonum,' Hedonistic or other, can avail for the settlement of (the question of what law or usage or course of action contributes to the better-being of society) which requires analysis of facts and circumstances, not consideration of ends. But it (a theory such as this) will sufficiently direct us in regard to the kind of effects we should look for in our analysis, and to the value we should put upon them when ascertained."'' How this is to be done forms no part of theory, yet that it occurs is the justification of the whole philosophy. The book ends, as it began, with the assertion that moral philosophy is the source of moral wisdom still unsubstantiated by any evidence beyond that of traditional acquiescence in convenient dogma. IV Martineau, always rather positive, permitted himself a much more definite exposition of moral principles than either Sidgwick or Green attempted, and for this reason it is not necessary to do more than recognize the fact that his contribution to morality obviously falls short of being what he meant it to be. It would seem as though a thinker who believed morality to consist in "a feeling that this is worthier than that," and that the exercise of this feeling "demands no reflective introspection, no ability to lay the finger on what it is in the action which excites the feeling, or even to ask the question whether it be the motive or ' Ibid., pp. 391-92. 3 Ibid., p. 394. » Ibid., pp. 392-93. -• Ibid., p. 395. lO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS the effect,'" would naturally feel little necessity for providing the world with a book on ethics, except as a piece of scientific descrip- tion. One does not have to listen long to the tone of the book, however, to realize that Martineau also labored under the universal ethical misapprehension that from his exposition of the facts of the moral choice he could deduce some positive contribution to morality. The necessity for moral guidance becomes evident as soon as he has shown that conscience does not work the same in all cases, because {mirahile dictu!) different verdicts, "though apparently pronoimced upon the same act, are even directed upon it in dissim- ilar and even in opposite relations."^ Martineau therefore sets about the task of stabilizing the work of conscience by providing it with a set of principles (through a himdred and thirty-six pages) ^ with reference to which the rightness and wrongness of an act may surely be determined'' — after first chiding Sidgwick, Spencer, and Stephen for not having had the mental stamina to precede him in this necessary work. Martineau's achievement, however, is hardly enough to justify the conclusion that from a theory of the nature of moraHty a mor- ality may be inferred. Waiving all consideration of the compati- bility of the authority of Martineau's conscience and Martineau's principles, a glance at the nature of the principles themselves is sufficient to show that they are as far as the principle of self- realization from the needs of any actual moral situation. Martineau did not realize this, as Green and Sidgwick did of their generaliza- tions. He produces situation after situation, solving each one in imagination without the least difficulty. Martineau's conception of a moral problem, however, does more credit to his character than to his mind ; there is very little reality either to the difficulties or to their solution, to the modern way of thinking. V In spite of the inadequacy of the t>pes of ethical theory which have just been criticized, the fair historian cannot pass lightly over the positive contributions of Sidgwick, Green, and Martineau. It ' James Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (3d ed.), II, 58. * Ibid., p. 63. 3 Ibid., chaps, v. and vi. ■* Ibid., p. 270. FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY ii can hardly be expected that any philosopher will solve all the problems of the cosmos, though his failure to do so must be pains- takingly noted in the interest of future progress. Moreover, the un- examined postulate which has been shown to underlie this ethical work was inherited from many generations of scholars, and perhaps it was not to be expected that it should be noted and its fallacy exposed in a period such as the Victorian; for while Darwin's work was already having large effects in all fields of thought in the seventies and eighties, still the evolutionary attitude had not become habitual in the sense in which it is now. Furthermore, though the great social reconstructions which are now going on were implicitly present at that time, the traditional "common-sense" morality of the race was very much less in question then than now. These two changes — the recognition of the wide variations through various evolutionary epochs of the social background of morality and the demands made by modern industrial society for a reconstruction of conventional morality — are largely responsible for the growing recognition of the inadequacy of the older type of ethical theory. That moral conduct is social conduct is no new idea. It is specifically enunciated by Aristotle, who defines ethics as a "study of man in his relations to society."^ In a certain sense Aristotle may be said to have been in possession of an idea of which Baldwin's principle that "all rules of action for the guidance of life must be of possible social application, even though in their origin they are announced and urged by individuals,"^ is simply one expression. The significant thing, however, is not that Baldwin thus restated the Kantian categorical imperative in the language of sociology, but rather that the importance of recognizing the social nature of moral problems was very much emphasized in the nineties, notably in the six hundred pages of Baldwin's Interpretations. \ Furthermore, it is one thing to acknowledge the existence of society as the home of the individual; it is quite another thing to maintain, as Sumner was doing,-' that society constructs the indi- vidual. The serious exposition of the theory that "right" means only ^ Aristotle, Nicomachcan Ethics: I. i. 2. * Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations (3d ed.), p. 551. 3 For though Folkways was not published until 1907, Sumner was teaching the doctrines which it contained very much earlier. See Folkways, Preface. 12 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS "compatible with the existing order of things,"' and that "philoso- phy and ethics are the products of the folkways,"^ really represented a new attitude toward the development of society if not a wholly new conception. The new recognition of the facts of social life, particularly of the significance of the wide discrepancies between the moral conduct of different peoples in different periods of social evolution, was perhaps a less potent awakener of ethicists from their dogmatic slumber than the growth of the modern urban-industrial society. Professor Tufts considers this the chief cause of the reconstruction of ethical concepts. If we ask what has affected most intensely the ethical thought of the period we must find an answer, not in science, but in the economic, political, and family life. The changing conditions of business and industry, the shift to urban life, the consequent changes in the family, the demands for new legislation, the controversies over judicial interpretations, the search for more effective deahng with poverty, vice, and crime, last of all the issues of nationalism and internationalism, war and peace — these and others of like sort have stirred men from easy reflection.'' VI In the face of problems such as these it would seem that the old subconscious dogma of ethics, the supposition that what men need is a clearer exposition of moral phenomena, must atrophy from very disuse. As a matter of fact, however, while certain men re- solved the premise of the older ethics by advocating the abandon- ment of metaphysico-psychological speculation for the more fruitful study of actual affairs, others seized the opposite horn of the di- lemma and proceeded to make ethics a "natural science." The form which this "natural" ethics typically took was that of an attempt to account for the phenomena of social life in terms of a moral instinct. In 1887 Hoffding had made a careful descriptive analysis of the moral organization of the family, the state, and "die freie Kulturgesellschaft," using as his principles of explanation a ' Sumner, Folkways, p. 28. ^ Ibid., p. 38. 3 J. H. Tufts, "Ethics in tlie Last Twenty-five Years, " Philosophical Review, Jan- uary, 191 7. FUNCTION AND PROBLEMS OF ETHICAL THEORY 13 "Lust- Oder Unlustgefiihl "' which, "wenn es sich auf der Grund- lage der S>Tnpathie zum Pflicht — und Gerechtigkeitsgefiihl ent- wickelt, wird das in diesem Gesetz ausgesprochene Prinzip zuletzt der Massstab der gefallten ethischen Urtheile sein,"^ and a concep- tion of "Wohlfahrt" as "das Prinzip fiir die Feststellung des Inhalts der Ethik und fur die Wertschatzung der menschHchen Handlungen."^ Hoffding, however, wrote before the extension of the evolution- ary principle to the field of morals had been consummated, and he therefore did not attempt to make his explanation include the development of modern out of primitive morality. This task was very boldly attacked a decade later in Sutherland's Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. Sutherland attempted to trace the origin of an instinct which, emerging from the parental instinct of the lower animals in the form of sympathy, had "deepened and expanded" into "the moral instinct with all its accompanying accessories, the sense of duty, the feeling of self-respect, the enthusi- asm of both the tender and the manly ideal of ethic beauty."'' With Westermarck this moral emotion is broadened into a mere emotion of approval and disapproval, which, acting spontaneously though apparently along relatively fixed lines, ^ determines the forms which moral and immoral practices assume in different civilizations.^ While the work which has been accompHshed by this type of "scientific ethics" has been of the very highest scientific value for the sympathetic understanding of moralities foreign to our own, yet, as Green pointed out, it does not afford any basis whatever for the formulation of a positive contribution to the morahty of our own day. Hoffding saw this clearly enough. "EssindzweiAufgabender wissenschaftlichen Ethik zu unterscheiden," he said. "Dieselbe ist teils eine historische, teils eine philosophische Wissenschaft. Die historische oder vergleichende Ethik sucht die positive Moralitat ' Harold Hoffding, Ethik (German translation), p. 24. ^/6/