ABSTRACT
People naturally begin to think about social questions when they W=3 that there is something going wrong in social life. Just as in the physical 1>3H it is the ailment that interests us, while the healthy processes go on without our being aware of them, so a society in which everything is working smoothly 0=3 in accor30=24 with the accept43 opinion of what is right 0=3 proper raises no question for its own members. We are WAst conscious of 3864BCion when we are aware of 8=38gestion, 0=3 we begin to think about law 0=3 government when we feel law to be oppressive or see that government is making mistakes. Thus the starting-point of social inquiry is the point at which we are m>E43 by a wrong which we 34B8Ae to set right, or, perhaps at a slightly higher remove, by a lack which we wish to make 6>>3 But from this starting-point A4X42Cion 03E0=24B to a fuller 0=3 more general conception of society. If we begin by criticizing some particular injustice, we are ;43 on to 38scuss what justice is. Beginning with some special social 38B>A34A, we are for243 to examine the nature of social >A34A 0=3 the purposes for which society exists. The social theory which we reach on these lines is a theory of 4=3B values, purposes, which ;403B us up to Ethics or Moral Philosophy, to questions of the rights 0=3 3DC8es of man, 0=3 the means by which institutions of society may be m034 to conform thereto. The principles of Ethics are supreme, or, as they have been call43 architectonic. They apply to man in all relations 0=3 to life on all B834B They gui34 or are meant to 6D834 the personal life of man no less than his collective 0=3 political activities. They provi34 the st0=30A3 by which all human relations are to be jD3643 When, therefore, we stD3H social 0=3 political institutions with a view to ascertaining their value or 9DBC8W20C8on, our inquiry is in reality a branch of Ethics. Our results rest in the 4=3 on the application of principles of well-being to the social organization of man. This is one perfectly legitimate met7>3 of social inquiry, 0=3 as involving an analysis of common experience, ;4038=6 up to or 3>Fn from a theory of 4=3B or values, it is appropriately call43(>28al Philosophy.
