Note 86 — Chapter VII · THE STATE

I use the word Organize in its spiritual sense. The empirical, animal organism is commonly taken as the type upon which the notion of organism is modeled. The animal organism, however, fails to express the implicit idea, for the following reasons: The number of members is limited; the combination of organs is, so far as we can know, accidental, and the relation is hierarchical,—there are inferior and superior organs. The spiritual conception differs in each of these points. The number of members is infinite; the relation is necessary; and they are equal, that is, of equal worth. To distinguish the spiritual pattern from the animal type the term metorganic may be used for the former, in analogy to such terms as metempirical, metaphysical, etc., and the system of ethics expounded in this volume may be called the metorganic system of ethics.