To sum up: we have to distinguish clearly between two questions: (1) how far the determination of right conduct for an individual here and now ought to be influenced by Positive Laws, and other commands of Government as actually established; and (2) how far it ought to be influenced by Political Theory, as to the functions and structure of Government as it ought to be. As regards the former, it clearly belongs to Ethics to determine the grounds and limits of obedience to Government; and also the general conception of political duty, so far as it goes beyond mere obedience--with due recognition of the large variations due to the varying political conditions of different states. (A “good citizen” in the United States will reasonably form a conception of his actual political duty widely divergent from that reasonably formed by a good citizen in Russia.[23]) And this will be the primary business of Ethics so far as it deals with the political side of life. The discussion of political ideals will only come within its purview in a more indefinite and indirect way, so far as such ideals cannot but have some influence on the determination of political duty under existing conditions. § 2. I have stated the Relation of Ethics to Politics--regarded from an ethical point of view--that seems to me to accord with the definition of the former subject adopted in the preceding chapter. Some thinkers, however, take a view of Ethical Theory which involves a relation to Political Theory quite different from that just set forth; regarding Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics as properly an investigation not of what ought to be done here and now, but of what ought to be the rules of behaviour in a society of ideally perfect human beings. Thus the subject-matter of our study would be doubly ideal: as it would not only prescribe what ought to be done as distinct from what is, but what ought to be done in a society that itself _is_ not, but only _ought_ to be. In this view the conclusions of Theoretical or “Absolute” Ethics would have as indirect and uncertain a relation to the practical problems of actual life as those of Theoretical Politics:--or even more so, as in sober political theory it is commonly only the government and not the governed society that is conceived in an ideal condition. Still the two studies are not unlikely to blend in one theory of ideal social relations;--unless the ideal society is conceived as having no need of government, so that Politics, in the ordinary sense,[24] vanishes altogether.