3. A criticism somewhat similar to that here bestowed upon Political Economy is applicable to Ethics. It has been the function of writers and preachers upon Morals, hitherto, to inculcate the duty of submitting to the exigencies of false social relations. The Science of Society teaches, on the other hand, the rectification of those relations themselves. So long as men find themselves embarrassed by complicated connections of interest, so that the consequences of their acts inevitably devolve upon others, the highest virtue consists in mutual concessions and abnegation of selfhood. Hence the necessity for Ethics, in that stage of progress, to enforce the reluctant sacrifice, by stringent appeals to the conscience. The truest condition of society, however, is that in which each individual is enabled and constrained to assume, to the greatest extent possible, the Cost or disagreeable consequences of his own acts. That condition of society can only arise from a general disintegration of interests,--from rendering the interests of all as completely individual as their persons. The Science of Society teaches the means of that individualization of interests, coupled, however, with cooperation. Hence it graduates the individual, so to speak, out of the sphere of Ethics into that of Personality,--out of the sphere of duty or submission to the wants of others, into the sphere of integral development and freedom. Hence the Science of Society may be said to absorb the Science of Ethics as it does that of Political Economy, while it teaches far more exactly the limits of right by defining the true relations of men.

4. The Science of Society labors indeed under a serious embarrassment from the fact of its comprehensiveness. The changes which the realization of the principles it unfolds would bring about in the circumstances of society make it differ from matters of ordinary science, in the fact of its immediate and complicated effects upon what may be termed the vested interests of the community. It is difficult for men to regard that as purely a question of science which they foresee is a radical reform and revolution as well. Still there are few persons who do not recognize the fact that there is some subtle and undiscovered cause of manifold evils, lying hid down in the very foundations of our existing social fabric, and which it is extremely desirable should be eradicated by some means, however much they may differ with reference to the instrumentalities through which the amelioration is to be sought for. The demand for a thorough investigation of the subject, and a settlement upon true principles of the relations of labor and capital especially, has come up during the last few years with more prominence than ever before, both in Europe and America, and has given rise to the various forms of Socialism which are now agitating the whole world. The real significance and tendency of Socialism are stated in No. I of this series of publications, entitled, “The True Constitution of Government, in the Sovereignty of the Individual, as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism.