institutions. It is not limited to any one
form, and it is capable of manifesting itself in new forms and of
developing and changing old forms. Indeed, the civic community is more
than a political fabric. It includes all the social institutions in and
by which the individual life is influenced--such as are the family, the
school, the church, the legislature, and the executive. None of these
can subsist in isolation from the rest; together they and other
institutions of the kind form a single organic whole, the whole which is
known as the nation. The spirit and habit of life which this organic
entirety inspires and compels are what, for my present purpose, I mean
by _Sittlichkeit_.

_Sitte_ is the German for custom, and _Sittlichkeit_ implies custom and
a habit of mind and action. It also implies a little more. Fichte
defines it in words which are worth quoting, and which I will put into
English:

What, to begin with, does _Sitte_ signify, and in what sense do
we use the word? It means for us, and means in every accurate
reference we make of it, those principles of conduct which
regulate people in their relations to each other, and which
have become matter of habit and second nature at the stage of
culture reached, and of which, therefore, we are not explicitly
conscious. Principles, we call them, because we do not refer to
the sort of conduct that is casual or is determined on casual
grounds, but to the hidden and uniform ground of action which
we assume to be present in the man whose action is not
deflected and from which we can pretty certainly predict what
he will do. Principles, we say, which have become a second
nature and of which we are not explicitly conscious. We thus
exclude all impulses and motives based on free individual
choice, the inward aspect of _Sittlichkeit_, that is to say,
morality, and also the outward side, or law, alike. For what a
man has first to reflect over and then freely to resolve is not
for him a habit in conduct; and in so far as habit in conduct
is associated with a particular age, it is regarded as the
unconscious instrument of the Time Spirit.

The system of ethical habit in a community is of a dominating character,
for the decision and influence of the whole community is embodied in
that social habit. Because such conduct is systematic and covers the
whole of the field of society,