absorbed from the group. Like honor, however, it calls for an individual reaction of assent and dissent, and becomes an individual trait or possession in the form which it ultimately takes.

503. The great variety in the codes. All the topics which have been treated in this chapter are branches or outreachings of the social code. They show how deep is the interest of human beings in the sex taboo, and in the self-perpetuation of society. Men have always tried, and are trying still, to solve the problem of well living in this respect. The men, the women, the children, and the society have joint and several interests, and the complication is great. At the present time population, race, marriage, childbirth, and the education of children present us our greatest problems and most unfathomable mysteries. All the contradictory usages of chastity, decency, propriety, etc., have their sense in some assumed relation to the welfare of society. To some extent they have come out of caprice, but chiefly they have issued from experience of good and ill, and are due to efforts to live well. Thus we may discern in them policies and philosophies, but they never proceed to form any such generalities as do rationally adopted motives. There is logic in the folkways, but never rationality. Given the premises, in a notion of kin, for instance, and the deductions are made directly and generally correctly, but the premises could never be verified, and they were oftener false than true. Each group took its own way, making its own assumptions, and following its own logic. So there was great variety and discord in their policies and philosophies, but within the area of a custom, during its dominion, its authority is absolute; and hence, although the usages are infinitely various, directly contradictory, and mutually abominable, they are, within their area of dominion, of equal value and force, and they are the standards of what is true and right. The groups have often tried to convert each other by argument and reason. They have never succeeded. Each one's reasons are the tradition which it has received from its ancestors. That does not admit of argument. Each tries to convince the other by going outside of the tradition to some philosophic standard of truth. Then the tradition is left in full force. Shocking as it must be to any group

to be told that there is no rational ground for any one of them to convert another group to its mores (because this seems to imply, although it does not, that their folkways are not better than those of other groups), yet this must be said, for it is true. By experience and science the nations which by name are Christian have reached ways which are better fitted, on the whole, for well living than those of the Mohammedan nations, although this superiority is not by any means so complete and sweeping as current opinion in Christian countries believes. If Christians and Mohammedans come together and argue, they never make the slightest impression on each other. During the crusades, in Andalusia, and in cities of the near East where they live side by side, they have come to peace, mutual respect, and mutual influence. Syncretism begins. There is giving and taking. In Egypt at present the Moslems see the power of the English to carry on industry, commerce, and government, and this observation produces effect on the folkways. That is the chief way in which folkways are modified or borrowed. It was by this process that Greeks and Romans influenced the folkways of barbarians, and that white men have influenced those of negroes, Indians, Polynesians, Japanese, etc.

504. Morals and deportment. Different groups and different ages have differed much in the place in the social codes in which certain subjects have been placed; that is, for instance, as to whether the treatment of women by men should be put under morals, or under manners, or under good taste; whether public exhibitions deserved more attention than deportment, etc. For instance: "There is hardly a word, in the instructions of Plutarch, upon schools and schooling, but he alludes casually to the strange scenes which boys were allowed to witness, criminals dressed up with robes and crowns, and presently stripped and publicly tortured; paintings of subjects so objectionable that we should carefully explain to the child the distinction between art as such and art as a vehicle of morals. On the other hand, deportment was strictly watched for example, it was the rule not to use the left hand unless it were to hold bread at dinner, while other food was taken with the right; to walk in the street

without looking up; to touch salt fish with one finger; fresh fish, bread, and meat, with two; to scratch yourself thus; to fold your cloak thus."

"1

505. The relation of the social codes to philosophy and religion. Amongst the widest differences of opinion would be that on the question whether the social codes issue out of and are enthused by philosophy or religion. We are told that "for most men, actions stand in no necessary connection with any theoretical convictions of theirs, but are, on the contrary, independent of the same, and are dominated by inherited and acquired motives." 2 Why is this not true? Also, "the antagonism between the principles of our religion and our actual behavior, even of the faithful, as well as the great difference in the ethical views of different peoples who profess the same religion, sufficiently proves that the motives of our acts, and our judgments on the acts of others, proceed primarily from practical life [i.e. from the current mores], and that what we believe has comparatively little influence on our acts and judgments." Religion and philosophy are components of the mores, but not by any means sources or regulators of them.

4

506. Rudeck's conclusions. A recent German writer on the history of public morality says of the moral development of the German people that one cannot bear to contemplate it, because the people face the facts with absolute indifference. There is not a trace of moral initiative or of moral consciousness. Existing morality presents itself to us as a purely accidental product of forces which act without sense or intelligence. We can find all kinds of forces in history except ethical forces. Those are entirely wanting. There is no development, for development means the unfolding and growth of a germ according to the elements which it contains. The people allow all kinds of mores to be forced on them by the work of their own hands, that is, by the economic and political arrangements which they have

1 Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, 324.

2 Schultze-Gävernitz in Ammon, Gesellschaftsordnung, 117.

8 Schallmeyer, Vererbung und Auslese, 231.

4 Rudeck, Gesch. der Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 422.

adopted. The German people has no subjective notion of public morality and no ethical ideal for public morality. They distinguish only between good and bad mores (Sitten und Unsitten), without regard to their origin.

507. Rudeck's book is really a chapter in the history of the mores. The above are the conclusions which seem to be forced upon him, but he recoils from them in dismay. The conclusions are unquestionably correct. They are exactly what the history teaches. They ought to be accepted and used for profit. The fact that people are indifferent to the history of their own mores is a primary fact. We can only accept it and learn from it. It shows us the immense error of that current social discussion which consists in bringing "ethical" notions to the criticism of facts. The ethical notions are figments of speculation. Criticism of the mores is like criticising one's ancestors for the physique one has inherited, or one's children for being, in body and mind, one's children. If it is true of the German people that there is no moral initiative or consciousness in their tone and attitude towards their mores, they are to be congratulated, for they have kept out one great influx of subjective and dogmatic mischief. Other nations have a "nonconformist conscience" or a party of "great moral ideas," which can be caught by a phrase, or stampeded by a catching watchword with a "moral" suggestion. "Existing morality does present itself as a purely accidental [i.e. not to be investigated] product of forces which act without sense or intelligence," but the product is in no true sense accidental. It is true that there are no ethical forces in history. Let us recognize the fact and its consequences. Some philosophers make great efforts to interpret ethical forces into history, but they play with words. There is no development of the mores along any lines of logical or other sequence. The mores shift in endless readjustment of the modes of behavior, effort, and thinking, so as to reach the greatest advantage under the conditions. "The people allow all kinds of mores to be forced on them by the work of their own hands," that is, by the economic and political arrangements which have been unconsciously forced on them by their instinctive efforts to live well. That is just

what they do, and that is the way in which mores come to be. "The German people has no subjective notion of public morality and no ethical ideal for public morality." Nor has any other people. A people sometimes adopts an ideal of national vanity, which includes ambition, but an ethical ideal no group ever has. If it pretended to have one it would be a humbug. That is why the introduction of "moral ideas" into politics serves the most immoral purposes and plays into the hands of the most immoral men. All ethics grow out of the mores and are a part of them. That is why the ethics never can be antecedent to the mores, and cannot be in a causal or productive relation to them. "The German people distinguishes only between customs and abuses [Sitten und Unsitten] without regard to their origin." They are quite right to do so, because the origin is only a matter for historians. For the masses the mores are facts. They use them and they testify that they are conducive to well living (Sitten), or the contrary (Unsitten). The men, women, and children who compose a society at any time are the unconscious depositaries and transmitters of the mores. They inherited them without knowing it; they are molding them unconsciously; they will transmit them involuntarily. The people cannot make the mores. They are made by them. Yet the group is at once makers and made. Each one may put into the group life as much as he can, but the group will give back to him order and determination. from which he cannot escape. The mores grow as they must grow under the conditions. They are products of the effort of each to live as well as he can, and they are coercions which hold and control each in his efforts to live well. It is idle to try to get outside of this operation in order to tell which part of it comes first and makes the other. "Our age presents us the incredible spectacle that the dependence of the higher social culture on the economic development is not only clearly recognized by social science, but is proclaimed as the ideal." Social science does not proclaim this as an ideal. It does not deal in ideals. It accepts the dependence of culture on economic development as a fact. In fact, Rudeck is not justified in saying (p. 426) that “culture is the unity of the moral will in all the life phenomena of a people,"