duty and act morally. To Kant, "the executioner of Deism," succeeded Fichte, the forerunner of the modern Socialism; Hegel, the collectionist and reactionist; Schleiermacher, the Janus-headed Christian and philosopher; Schopenhauer, the Nirvana-intoxicated pessimist; and the misunderstood Friedrich Nietzsche, poet-philosopher and aristocrat-radical in the domain of modern thought; and Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer continued to develop ethical and moral problems and set forth theories of their own. CHAPTER VIII SOCIOLOGY § 1. "IT is not good for man to be alone," and even the charms of Paradise cannot make up for the ennui of solitude. It is contrary to human nature to live alone. Man is dependent upon his fellow-men alike in his natural wants and in the necessaries of life. Therefore he associates himself with other beings, seeks acquaintances and forms alliances. We can trace the history of man to the remotest periods of antiquity; but always and everywhere we find him shunning solitude and living in company with others. He lives in social groups, in families, clans, communities, tribes, or nations, and engages with others in various forms of activity. What, then, are the conditions and forms under which men associate with others? What are the forms of activity in which man engages in common with other men? How do men influence one another? What are the forms of their relations? And, finally, what are the laws by which the development of man's social life is regulated? This study-the most interesting for man, as Comte declared-is termed Sociology.' Other branches of Philosophy are concerned with the nature of the material universe and the problems it suggests (like Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy); or (in Anthropology) with man as an individual, inquiring into his origin and relations to the animal creations; or (in Ethics and Psychology) into the work of the spirit of man, as a conscious being, and into his efforts to know himself; while Sociology is concerned with man in his relations to the social world into which he is born, and deals with the 66 It phenomena to which such a living-together gives rise. is that department of thought which embraces the science of society and association, or of associated humanity—that is, humanity so far as it is united, so far as it is associated, consisting of individual units that are somehow bound together. It comprehends the whole of the human species as it is, has been, and will be. It explains the process of human association and the interaction of social forces, and having discovered the law that underlies the development of these social forces, tries to regulate them for the future. Sociology, we may say, endeavours to discover the laws, principles, and essences of the social phenomena, and avails itself of the knowledge thus gained to benefit humanity. The It § 2. The term Sociology was invented by Auguste Comte. It is a compound of the Latin word socius, society, and the Greek λóyos (logos), science. science of Sociology, however, existed before its name. was, like all other sciences at their early stage, not purely theoretical, but also directed to practical questions and known under the name of "Politics." Plato laid down his ideas and ideals of the State and the forms of government in his two works, "Laws" and the " Republic." He defined the ethical aim of the State as he conceived it. Aristotle did not believe in the ideal state and the golden age dreamt of by Plato. In his "Politics" he endeavoured to give an analysis of the then existing forms of government, dividing them, according to the number of rulers, into Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Polity. Proceeding from the idea that "man is by nature a social or political animal"-i.e. that both in the primitive and in the advanced state of development he cannot live isolated, but must live in social groups-Aristotle considered the organization of the State as the product of nature. “The analysis," says Comte, "by which he refuted the dangerous fancies of Plato and his imitators about community of property, evidences a rectitude, a sagacity, and a strength, which, in their application to such subjects, have been rarely equalled and never surpassed.” Roman philosophical speculation added nothing to the political theories of Greece. The Middle Ages, dominated exclusively by the influence of religion and occupied with theological problems, had no time for sociological questions. During the times of the Renaissance, however, special interest was again taken in them. The questions and problems of "natural rights" had already been raised by the philosophers and lawyers of antiquity, as evinced in Cicero's statement: "Universal conduct is the law of nature," i.e. that in every matter the consent of all is to be considered as the law of nature, or in Ulpian's, the Roman jurist's, distinction between jus naturale (natural right) and jus gentium (law of nations). During the Renaissance these questions passed out of the region of theoretical speculation into that of practical politics. Hugo Grotius was the first to start the question of natural and conventional rights, and was thus the father of the study called " Philosophy of Law." After him, Thomas Hobbes-who, in his metaphysical and ethical views ("Treatise of Liberty and Necessity") stated that man, like all creatures, was subject to the law of necessity, to fate, or to the will of God, and that interest was the supreme judge in morals as in everything else-applied these doctrines also to politics. For him the state of nature is the state of war of all against all, the bellum omnium contra omnes, or the struggle for existence, where 66 might" makes " right." For the sake of selfpreservation, however, and in order to put an end to the conflict, to mitigate the state of nature by association, men entered into a sort of contract among themselves and invented the State. The State is only the means of protecting the life and property of individuals; but for the individual the will of the State must be the supreme law. Only at the cost of an absolute obedience on the part of the subject, will the State be able to attain its aim. Hobbes is thus the founder of the so-called " contract theory." Montesquieu, in his "Greatness and Decline of the Romans" and in his "Spirit of Law," maintains that political phenomena are subject to invariable laws, like all other phenomena of nature. "He conceived," says Comte, "natural laws as the basis of social speculation and action, whilst other able men were talking about the |