Ethical Convictions Research Articles

What Is "Sociology of Law"?

The sociology of law, a new science, studies human behavior in society in so far as it is determined by commonly recognized ethico-legal norms, and in so far as it influences them. Jurisprudence, on the other hand, studies the norms as such, from three main points of view: analytical or positive, historical, and theoretical. Other attempts to delimit the field of sociology of law, such as those of H. Rolin, W. Schoenfeld, H. U. Kantorowicz, J. Kraft, I. Kornefeld, E. Ehrlich, H. Kelsen, Max Weber, B. Horvath, L. Petrajitsky, C. Lombroso, M. Rumpf, and others, are of some value, although not altogether satisfactory. The studies of psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers of law, and jurists permit the formulation of a sociological definition of law as a complex instrument of social co-ordination synthesizing ethical conviction and political power.

The Place and Function of a Standard in a Genetic Theory of Literary Development

In Modern Philology for April and July, 1909, I attempted to construct a theory of literary development on the basis of genetic psychology. Literature was there defined to be a function of consciousness, a psychological and social product devised for the purpose of revealing the ethical and æsthetic values of human life. So far as the propagation and variation of literary forms are concerned emphasis was laid upon the fact that these processes take place in every case through the medium of a conscious personality. This human consciousness is endowed with certain powers or aptitudes by virtue of which it assimilates to itself the traditions, conventions, artistic forms, religious beliefs, ethical convictions, scientific ideas, etc., of the society in which it is born, and hands them down to the generation that follows. The physical and mental endowment which enables the individual thus to learn and to transmit his acquirements to others constitutes his physical or biological heredity. The process of learning imitatively from the models, patterns, or examples, of one's predecessors is called by the psychologists “imitative selection”; and the great body of traditions, conventions, forms, from which the individual must learn, and to which he must adjust himself, is termed his “social heredity.” Variation in literature may therefore be defined as the attempt more or less constant to adjust literature to the writer's social heredity—or, as Prof. Manly has shown in the case of the mediæval drama, it is the combination of elements or unit characters hitherto kept separate. The cardinal factor to be emphasized in any study of variation in literature is therefore the individual consciousness, its power of imitative selection, its dependence on social heredity for the materials with which it works, and its power of constructive imagination by which new combinations are produced. For example, I showed that Hauptman's naturalistic drama is to be explained as the combination of the traditional dramatic form with the evolutionary idea that man's destiny is controlled by heredity and environment and not by free will. Both these elements, the traditional dramatic form and the evolutionary idea, Hauptmann assimilated from his social heredity, and then by his power of æsthetic invention he united them in a new variation, the naturalistic drama.

The Place and Function of a Standard in a Genetic Theory of Literary Development

In Miodern Philology for April and July, 1909, I attempted to construct a theory of literary development on the basis of genetic psychology.' Literature was there defined to be a function of consciousness, a psychological and social product devised for the purpose of revealing the ethical and aesthetic values of human life. So far as the propagation and variation of literary forms are concerned emphasis was laid upon the fact that these processes take place in every case through the medium of a conscious personality. This human consciousness is endowed with certain powers or aptitudes by virtue of which it assimilates to itself the traditions, conventions, artistic forms, religious beliefs, ethical convictions, scientific ideas, etc., of the society in which it is born, and hands them down to the generation that follows. The physical and mental endowment which enables the individual thus to learn and to transmit his