The lawgiver does not speak of an
obedience-faculty, nor even of a social-faculty. If there were in the
mind a power unique and apart, having nothing in common with our usual
intelligence, and nothing in common with our usual will or volition,
that power ought to be expressed in terms that exclude the smallest
participation of both knowledge and will; it ought to have a form
special to itself, and not the form:--"Do this, and ye shall be made to
suffer".
I am quite aware that there are elements in ethics not included in the
problem of social obedience; what I contend for is, that the ground
should be cleared by marking out the two provinces, as is actually done
by a very small number of theorists, of whom John Austin is about the
best example.
The ethical philosopher, from not building on a foregone sociology, is
obliged to extemporize, in a paragraph, the social system; just as the
physical philosopher would, if he had no regularly constructed
mathematics to fall back upon, but had to stop every now and then to
enunciate a mathematical theorem.
The question of the ethical end should first appear as the question of
the sociological end. For what purpose or purposes is society
maintained? All the ethical difficulties are here met by anticipation,
and in a form much better adapted to their solution.
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