THE MORAL STANDARD. 5 



one of our writers is indeed a piece of merely rhetorical exaggera- 

 tion, but the distinction between rectitude and propriety be- 

 tween the criterion of the moral and the criterion of the social 

 code has none the less to be emphasized. 



3. In the early stages of social evolution custom tends to 

 harden into definite precept; hence the third pre-ethical standard 

 of conduct the legal or political standard. Guidance by custom 

 is, as I have above implied, the primordial form of guidance in 

 the low tribal group; but out of this arise gradually both the 

 sacred law, or the command of the deified ancestor or chief, and 

 the secular law, or the command of the living ruler. At the out- 

 set, indeed, no distinction between sacred and secular is to be 

 made, the enactment of the chieftain, while he is still alive, pass- 

 ing insensibly into a religious enactment when, dying, he takes 

 his place among the tribal gods. But difi'erentiation presently 

 begins, and it is with the secular side of the matter after such 

 differentiation that we are now concerned. Law, then, emerges 

 when the spontaneously evolved customs of a social group are 

 gathered up and crystallized in the dictates of the strong man or 

 chieftain, and when vaguely diffused social sentiment thus re- 

 ceives distinct formulation and powerful personal support. 



It is evident that from the legal as from the theological point 

 of view right and wrong are primarily associated with obedience 

 and disobedience to external authority. Conformity to the par- 

 ticular requirements of the established body of laws implies alle- 

 giance, and allegiance is virtue; while insubordination consti- 

 tutes the very essence of evil, the element which makes crime 

 crime. The sanctions of the legal code are, therefore, once again 

 extraneous sanctions ; its restraints and incentives, penalties and 

 rewards, imposed from the outside. 



Thus, comparing the three principal pre-ethical codes with one 

 another, we find them characterized by certain important points 

 of similarity. In each case fortuitous and not necessary conse- 

 quences of action have been taken as the basis of restraint ; in 

 each case outside compulsion has furnished the required impulses 

 and deterrents ; in each case, therefore, the sanctions have been 

 almost entirely accidental and extraneous, and not to any ade- 

 quate extent fundamental and essential. 



And now we have only to place the moral code alongside of 

 these pre-ethical codes in order to throw its radical and differen- 

 tial qualities into immediate and striking relief. For what is the 

 code of morality strictly so called ? It is the code under which 

 actions are classified in virtue of their essential natures that is, 

 of their necessary bearings upon life. It formally postulates as 

 the ultimate end of conduct that which, after all, we find implied 

 in a more or less crude and confused fashi||^n in all ethical sys- 



