Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/840

 826 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Among those who have a pretty clear insight into the mechan- ism of control are the apostles of anarchism. To them not only does law stand out clearly as coercion, but religion, moral stand- ards, and systems of instruction all appear as so many ways of ensnaring the individual. But as the anarchist's roseate view of human nature forbids him to regard them as necessary to social order, he concludes they are means of class exploitation. Respectability is a fetich of bourgeois society. Moral standards are established by the rich and influential for the managing of the rest. The priest, with his faiths, catches and holds the sheep while the exploiters shear him. "Religion, authority, and state are all carved out of the same piece of wood : to the devil with them all ! "

It is undoubtedly true that the social pressure is not equal upon all, that very frequently we can detect the cloven foot of class rule under the robe of judge, or priest, or schoolmaster. But this does not justify the anarchist's obstinate confidence in human nature. To him the discovery of a trammel on the sov- ereign individual is sufficient reason for removing it ; and he is a negationist because his sharpened sense smells control in all parts of our culture. The social scientist must admire his pene- tration, but deprecate his conclusions. Because his X-ray shows control in all the social tissues, because his spectroscope reveals the element of collective ascendency in nearly every culture- product, the scientist does not deem it necessary to dissolve these tissues and destroy these products.

V.

Ethics. Ethics may be either individual or social, the one laying down the rules to be observed by the individual in attain- ing the greatest worth of his personal life, the other laying down the rules to be observed by men in their relations one with another in attaining the greatest worth of their collective life. The former is ethics proper, the latter it is best to regard as a branch of sociology. Now current ethics professes to find these two sets of rules identical, and thus by one stroke betrays the