Were we interested in ethical and political values for their own sake, it would be easy to show that our conception of the nature of society and of social values has a similar significance for politics and ethics. There is no one distinctive emotion, as fear, or the love of domination, that lies at the basis of the state; there is no one emotion, as sympathy, or the love of pleasure, which constitutes the essence of the moral values, nor is there any single type of mental activity, as imitation, or consciousness of kind, which furnishes the peculiar theme of sociology. Social life is not in water-tight compartments. It is one whole, of which the different sciences study different aspects. And the principle of division of labor among the social sciences is not that one science shall offer one theory of society and another science another theory, but rather, that each science shall take as its problem a phase of society, and explain it by reference to a general set of facts which all have in common. The differentiation comes not in the _explanation_ phenomena[177]--no science has any monopoly on any set of forces which may be used for the purpose of explanation--but in the phenomena to be explained, in the _problem_ phenomena.[178] FOOTNOTES: [175] _Vide_ Ross, _Foundations of Sociology_, chapter on the "Sociological Frontier of Economics," and Tarde, _Psychologie Economique_, _passim_. [176] It may be objected that instead of "breaking the circle," we have simply widened it--that economic values, working through other forms of value, affect other economic values still. In a sense, of course, this is true. In any truly _organic_ situation, we have the phenomenon of _reciprocal causation_. An organic situation _must_ be circular in this sense. The parts are _inter_dependent. And our objection to the theories criticized is based on the fact that they are essentially efforts to describe a process in _rectilinear causation_--in the case of the Austrians, _e.g._, the process is _from_ subjective utility, _to_ objective value of consumption goods, then _to_ the values of the production goods of the nearest rank, and then on and on to goods of remoter ranks, etc. Boehm-Bawerk recognizes very well that the charge of circular reasoning, if it could be brought home to the Austrians, would vitiate their system. _Vide_ "Grundzuege," Conrad's _Jahrbuecher_, 1886, p. 516. And Professor Clark likewise recognizes that value theory of the sort he is treating is spoiled by circular reasoning, as indicated by his criticism of a certain form of the labor theory in his _Distribution of Wealth_, p. 397. Whenever a small set of abstractions is picked out, as _the source_ and _cause_ of the rest of a movement, such a process of rectilinear causation is implied. And a rectilinear process has no right to get into a circle!