assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit and
predisposition along which dexterities and other psycho-physical
activities would run easily. Experiments with new born animals show that
in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends,
efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that
of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and
disappointments. Nevertheless, it is the method of rude experiment and
selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the
impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were
the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must
proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the
only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things
were selected which were expedient. They answered the purpose better
than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which
efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed.
The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but
in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was
concurrence toward that which proved to be most expedient.

All at last adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways
turned into customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed
in connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn
them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time,
provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform,
universal in the group, imperative, and invariable.

The operation by which folkways are produced consists in the frequent
repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or,
at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need.
The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual
and custom in the group. It is, therefore, in the highest degree
original and primitive. Out of the unconscious experiment which every
repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and
then, so far as the men are capable of reflection, convictions that the
ways are conducive to social welfare. When this conviction as to the
relation to welfare is added to the folkways, they are converted into
mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to
them, they win utility and importance and become the so