Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 71:282 (Apr 1914)
Article: Sociological Morals
Author: Henry H. Beach

BSac 71:282 (April 1914) p. 269

Sociological Morals

Henry H. Beach

Regarding the morals of sociology, like intellects and horses having been evolved from lower types, they may sometimes hark back to ancestral forms. Indeed, Herbert Spencer and other sociologists have encouraged such reversions. Says Spencer: “Great mischief has been done by the repellent aspect habitually given to moral rule by its expositors, and immense benefits are to be anticipated from presenting moral rule under that attractive aspect which it has when undistorted by superstition and asceticism.” “Nor does mischief result only from this undue severity of the ethical doctrine bequeathed us by the harsh past. Further mischief results from the impracticability of its ideal. In violent reaction against the utter selfishness of life as carried on in barbarous societies, it has insisted on a life utterly unselfish.”1 There may prove to be, however, some higher, greater alcyone than sociology, around which the universe revolves.

Society Not An Organism

If it were a fact that society is an organism, it might dull the sense of personal responsibility. Corporations are soulless.

Let us review a childhood lesson in lexicography. Life is the only attribute common to all organisms. It occupies the

BSac 71:282 (April 1914) p. 270

whole house. To put two lives into one organism would create a trust or a pair of Siamese twins. Society is an analogue, not an aggregate corporation. In the sixteenth century, Theophrastus Bombastus Hohenheim, with his microcosm, saw society more fairly — a little world. When Mr. Lynch entered the following in his notebook, he was supposed to be sane: “There is a composite creature called king-rat. It is not common, but it is to be seen in many museums. It appears that rats, which are very fraternal creatures after a fashion, associate with one another in such a way that their tails get fastened together, and there are sometimes as many as twenty rats making up one king-rat. Their heads are all stretched outwards in a circle, and their tails compacted and agglutinated together, nobody knows exactly how. It is a compound creature, the heads all outwards ready to run different ways, the tails amalgamated in this queer fashion.” 2 An advanced sociologist might safely be warned not to mistake a compound-rat for a social organism. They are not identical, though they suggest each other. The agglutinated-rat is not a chemical union, much less dynamic or psychological. The rat is only twenty, and the organism a billion. There is a suggestion, too, of Spinoza’s great aphorism: “One in all.” Is it moral or apotheosis?

Con...

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