is to reverse the traditional
arrangement--ethics, politics, or government--followed even by Bentham.
The lights of ethics are, in the first instance, psychological; its
discussions presuppose a number of definitions and distinctions that are
pure psychology. But before these have to be adduced, the subject has to
be set forth as a problem of sociology. "How is the King's government to
be carried on?" "How is society to be held together?" is the first
consideration; and the sociologist--as constitution-builder,
administrator, judge--is the person to grapple with the problem. 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. 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 actua