SOCIAL HEREDITY 1S3 



There is another level in consciousness which customs 

 and usages attain. Certain folkways become the objects 

 of thought when one group, through contact with another, 

 comes to recognize that in certain details its customs 

 differ from those of its neighbor. Conscious reflection 

 is provoked, and, as a result, certain folkways are pre- 

 served and inculcated. These selected folkways become 

 the mores. 10 Mores are the usages which have received 

 the definite and positive commendation of the group. 

 The sanction back of them is more than the sanction of 

 mere use and wont, it is the sanction of conscious com- 

 munity approval. And yet, "The mores contain the 

 norm by which, if we should discuss the mores, we should 

 have to judge the mores." 17 The mores come down to 

 us from the past in the same manner as folkways and 

 other customs. "Each individual is born into them as 

 he is born into the atmosphere, and he does not reflect 

 on them, or criticize them any more than a baby analyzes 

 the atmosphere before he begins to breathe it. Each one 

 is subjected to the influence of the mores, and formed by 

 them, before he is capable of reasoning about them." 1S 

 For this reason the mores determine the content of the 

 growing mind, and so if one were to criticize them he 

 would have to use in that criticism terms and traditions 

 which the mores themselves had given current circula- 

 tion. This is why the discussion of such established in- 

 stitutions as property and marriage does not immedi- 

 ately change our relations. Among the masses of people 

 such a discussion produces no controversy. It is only 

 among those who have emancipated themselves from the 

 control of habit and custom that there is sufficient in- 

 dependence of thought upon these subjects to provoke 



iChapin, op. tit., p. 76. IT Sumner, op. cit., p. 77. i 8 Ibid., p. 76. 



