riticism of the mores
is like criticising one's ancestors for the physique one has inherited,
or one's children for being, in body and mind, one's children. If it is
true of the German people that there is no moral initiative or
consciousness in their tone and attitude towards their mores, they are
to be congratulated, for they have kept out one great influx of
subjective and dogmatic mischief. Other nations have a "nonconformist
conscience" or a party of "great moral ideas," which can be caught by a
phrase, or stampeded by a catching watchword with a "moral" suggestion.
"Existing morality _does_ present itself as a purely accidental [i.e.
not to be investigated] product of forces which act without sense or
intelligence," but the product is in no true sense accidental. It is
true that there are no ethical forces in history. Let us recognize the
fact and its consequences. Some philosophers make great efforts to
interpret ethical forces into history, but they play with words. There
is no development of the mores along any lines of logical or other
sequence. The mores shift in endless readjustment of the modes of
behavior, effort, and thinking, so as to reach the greatest advantage
under the conditions. "The people allow all kinds of mores to be forced
on them by the work of their own hands," that is, by the economic and
political arrangements which have been unconsciously forced on them by
their instinctive efforts to live well. That is just what they do, and
that is the way in which mores come to be. "The German people has no
subjective notion of public morality and no ethical ideal for public
morality." Nor has any other people. A people sometimes adopts an ideal
of national vanity, which includes ambition, but an ethical ideal no
group ever has. If it pretended to have one it would be a humbug. That
is why the introduction of "moral ideas" into politics serves the most
immoral purposes and plays into the hands of the most immoral men. All
ethics grow out of the mores and are a part of them. That is why the
ethics never can be antecedent to the mores, and cannot be in a causal
or productive relation to them. "The German people distinguishes only
between customs and abuses [_Sitten und Unsitten_] without regard to
their origin." They are quite right to do so, because the origin is only
a matter for historians. For the masses the mores are facts. They use
them and they testify that they are conducive to well living (_Sitten