[S.N. Patten's letter] May 18,1896,Philladelphia [to F.H. Giddings]

May 18, 1896, Philadelphia.

Dear Giddings,
         Your letter has been
to me extremely suggestive and help-
ful. It grows on me.
 One of my difficulties has been that
I had no place for concrete sciences.
To me the term always meant a medley,
no unity. Perhaps this was due to
the fact that I have never stud-
ied any concrete science but I have
always worked and classified from
a purely abstract standpoint.
I perhaps should have seen the
difference between the study of
phenomena on the motor and senso-
ry sides and in some ways I had
acquired the thought, but not in the
way you draw the distinction.
The elements of the sensory side are
isolated elements that are formed apart
and must gradually be united
into a higher whole. On the motor
side we have a few motives as elements
and must tease their effects. Concrete
sciences have the sensory elements dom-
inant, the abstract sciences have the
motor elements prominent. A growing
science whose evidence is mainly sen-
sory facts and dependent upon the
growth and keenness of the sensory
powers must be concrete. Such
sciences may in their formative period
overlap and occupy the same field
as a series of abstract sciences who
try to explain the same facts from
the conscious outgoing motor forces.
For the first time a double class-
ification means something to me.
 When I talk of the absorption of ethics
in economics I am always careful to
say utilitarian ethics. I too regard
real ethics as apart from and antago-
nistic to economics. But I can
not as you do make sciences of
both ethics and politics. It is in
the concrete sense that ethics and pol-
itics are distinct, that is, to keep to
the distinction we have agreed on, the
sensory phenomena are different.
The concrete things we see in the one
field is different from those of the other field.
In a concrete classification they
are separate and if we had names
for these concrete fields it would be
well. But shut out all this concrete
sensory phenomena and view them on
their motor side as conscious motives
and their differences disappear. They
are them of one kind as contrasted with
the economic motives.
 The trouble is that in the field of ethics
and politics law etc. we have never
had that abstract tendency which
purified economics. Ethics and
politics as abstract sciences seem to me
to be related in the way that the old
political economy and utilitarian
ethics were. Nothing seemed more
solid than the distinctions that
separated them yet they vanish-
ed before the first wave of a
pure abstract movement. So it
will be with politics and ethics.
The greater part of the present
so-called sciences belong to con-
crete sciences. The true elements
will soon blend when these concrete
parts are isolated from them.
 I used the phrase "conscious motives"
merely to prevent a repetition of the
phrase "conscious calculation." You
have my meaning clearly enough.
To me a conscious motive is not a motive
of which we are conscious (as you seem to use
it) but a motive formed under the
eye of consciousness, one of which we
recognize its source and cause and
can see the connection.
 If your thought grows on you as it does on
me a note in "Science" will not hold
it. Write it out in full before you
decide where to print it.
 I sail May 30th from here.
 Best wishes to Mrs. Giddings.
                                            Sincerely Yours,
                                            Simon N. Patten