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of right and wrong acts under certain heads; for example, theft, 

 murder, adultery, justice, honesty, etc. Should it be objected 

 that all the members of a given society do not prefer the same 

 things, the answer lies in two directions, both of which may 

 operate to determine the moral standing of any particular 

 society: first, the majority may rule; second, certain members 

 of such society may, because of position, or recognized author- 

 ity, largely determine the matter; that is, as J. S. Mill says, 

 "the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of 

 experience, to which must be added their habits of self-con- 

 sciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the 

 means of comparison". It is obvious that in many cases the 

 latter method has been more frequently operative than the 

 former; as, for example, in the giving of the moral law to 

 Israel, Moses was recognized, according to the traditional 

 view, as having a right to deliver the law, apparently no 

 thought of majority or minority being taken into account. 

 Some similar process has, no doubt, taken place in every tribal 

 or state organization in which anything like an absolute head 

 is recognized. In our own day, and in democratic communi- 

 ties, any change in the moral standing of the community has 

 to proceed by way of so-called public opinion, which, in the 

 last analysis, is often made by men of that particular type 

 stated by Mill. 



The moral rules which result from such a process are not, 

 and indeed cannot well be elementary. And we conceive that 

 it is the business of a science of ethics, not merely to register 

 and write an apologetic for some or all of such moral rules, but 

 rather to analyze the fundamental conditions in the state and 

 ultimately in human nature, upon the basis of which acts are 

 done, and to examine the relation of these elementary facts 

 to the individual and social life of the community. As sug- 

 gestive of such a procedure, may be instanced the account 

 given above of the transition from a state of society in which 

 the law of avenging of blood prevailed, and where the innocent 

 suffered with the guilty, to a state in which cities of refuge 

 were established, in order to secure for every manslayer a fair 

 trial before being handed over to the avenger of blood. 



That which must be emphasized continuously, then, is, 

 that the recognized moral laws are formulations made from 

 the standpoint of society, and not distinctly from the stand- 

 point of the individual members as isolated individuals, and 

 yet to insist that such formulations must have their final basis 

 in the nature of individual human beings living in some sort of 

 organized community. While this basis actually is the idea 

 of the welfare of society as a whole, yet it is not implied that 



