Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III TYPES OF ABNORMALITY AND IMPROVEMENT Three types of immorality. Since a large part of the practical work of applied sociology consists in dealing with immorality and incompetence, it is necessary not only to understand clearly the nature of these conditions, but to distinguish the different forms in which they manifest themselves; for each form of abnormality demands a special treatment. As regards immorality, it appears upon analysis that there are three distinct types in modern society — sin, crime, and vice. Sin is the broad term, and includes all acts which are contrary to the moral code of the society in which a given individual lives. Every society, as has been noted, has its own moral code. This has been built up gradually through the long course of social evolution; it is not fixed and immutable, but changes with changing conditions, material and spiritual. But at any given time it is absolute, and forms the norm to which all individuals are expected to conform. Every individual is expected to live his life in accordance with the code of his own society, and no individual can be expected to possess a personal code different from that of his group. There may possibly be something in the nature of an intuitive sense of right and wrong, but as far as definite acts are concerned, every one of us is dependent for his ideas upon the socialenvironment in which he is placed. Even the reformers, those whose ideals reach ahead of the actual, simply build upon the material furnished them by their human environment. The moral codes of no two societies are identical, and what is absolutely right in one group is absolutely wrong in another. Whether there are any great fundamental principles of conduct, the application of which is universal, and which apply to all so...