664 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
trine of individual education, so a full knowledge of social psy- chology must underlie the doctrine of social transformation ; that is, a " social pedagogy " or " teleology " must be developed from a knowledge of the processes of normal social growth, of psychical adjustment and readjustment in society, just as peda- gogy is developed from a knowledge of similar processes in the individual. When social psychology has reached the completed stage in which it can yield a doctrine of social betterment, or "social teleology," it is possible that there will be one other person beside the socialist who knows exactly what he wants done for the betterment of society ; that person will be the social psychologist. The methods of social improvement which he may propose will perhaps not pretend to be so speedy and cock- sure as those of socialism, but they will at least have the merit of resting upon a knowledge of the nature of the social process. We claim, therefore, for the study of social psychology ulti- mately a practical as well as a theoretical value.
We have already reached in our discussion the territory of ethics. In so far as ethics is a social science, it rests upon the facts of the psychical life of society, and so has much to expect from the development of social psychology. The phenomenon of moral valuation affords an illustration. Moral value, like economic value, has now come to be regarded as a social phe- nomenon ; that is, it is regarded as explicable only through the psychical life of society as a whole, not through the life of the individual. The reason why society regards one act as virtuous and another as wicked, one thing as having moral value and another as not, must, in the last resort, be found in the nature of the social psychic process, and can be understood only through understanding it, that is, through social psychology. The rela- tion of beliefs to the moral life is another problem which illus- trates the dependence of ethics upon the development of social psychology. The function of beliefs in the moral life of society, especially of the beliefs in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in moral freedom and responsibility, needs to be made out, and to be embodied by ethics in its discussion of the facts of the moral life. Whether the ethical activities of society can be car-
