self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided
with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are
formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which
to realize such purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the
place of taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than
revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are
characterized by greater or less readiness and confidence in regard to
the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes.

+63. How laws and institutions differ from mores.+ When folkways have
become institutions or laws they have changed their character and are to
be distinguished from the mores. The element of sentiment and faith
inheres in the mores. Laws and institutions have a rational and
practical character, and are more mechanical and utilitarian. The great
difference is that institutions and laws have a positive character,
while mores are unformulated and undefined. There is a philosophy
implicit in the folkways; when it is made explicit it becomes technical
philosophy. Objectively regarded, the mores are the customs which
actually conduce to welfare under existing life conditions. Acts under
the laws and institutions are conscious and voluntary; under the
folkways they are always unconscious and involuntary, so that they have
the character of natural necessity. Educated reflection and skepticism
can disturb this spontaneous relation. The laws, being positive
prescriptions, supersede the mores so far as they are adopted. It
follows that the mores come into operation where laws and tribunals
fail. The mores cover the great field of common life where there are no
laws or police regulations. They cover an immense and undefined domain,
and they break the way in new domains, not yet controlled at all. The
mores, therefore, build up new laws and police regulations in time.

+64. Difference between mores and some cognate things.+ Products of
intentional investigation or of rational and conscious reflection,
projects formally adopted by voluntary associations, rational methods
consciously selected, injunctions and prohibitions by authority, and all
specific conventional arrangements are not in the mores. They are
differentiated by the rational and conscious element in them. We may
also make a distinction between usages and mores. Usages are folkways
which contain no principl