It is
with him that law, obligation, right, command, obedience, sanction, have
their origin and their explanation. Ethics is an important supplement to
social or political law. But it is still a department of law. In any
other view it is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment.
That ethics is involved in society is of course admitted; what is not
admitted is, that ethical terms should be settled under the social
science in the first place. I may refer to the leading term "law," whose
meaning in sociology is remarkably clear; in ethics remarkably the
reverse. The confusion deepens when the moral faculty is brought
forward. In the eye of the sociologist, nothing could be simpler than
the conception of that part of our nature that is appealed to for
securing obedience. He assumes a certain effort of the intelligence for
understanding the signification of a command or a law; and, for the
motive part, he counts upon nothing but volition in its most ordinary
form--the avoidance of a pain. Intelligence and Will, in their usual and
recognised workings, are all that are required for social obedience; law
is conceived and framed exactly to suit the every-day and every-hour
manifestations of these powers.
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