the
mores. Another society may also pass judgment on the mores. In our
literary and historical study of the mores we want to get from them
their educational value, which consists in the stimulus or warning as to
what is, in its effects, societally good or bad. This may lead us to
reject or neglect a phenomenon like infanticide, slavery, or witchcraft,
as an old "abuse" and "evil," or to pass by the crusades as a folly
which cannot recur. Such a course would be a great error. Everything in
the mores of a time and place must be regarded as justified with regard
to that time and place. "Good" mores are those which are well adapted to
the situation. "Bad" mores are those which are not so adapted. The mores
are not so stereotyped and changeless as might appear, because they are
forever moving towards more complete adaptation to conditions and
interests, and also towards more complete adjustment to each other.
People in mass have never made or kept up a custom in order to hurt
their own interests. They have made innumerable errors as to what their
interests were and how to satisfy them, but they have always aimed to
serve their interests as well as they could. This gives the standpoint
for the student of the mores. All things in them come before him on the
same plane. They all bring instruction and warning. They all have the
same relation to power and welfare. The mistakes in them are component
parts of them. We do not study them in order to approve some of them
and condemn others. They are all equally worthy of attention from the
fact that they existed and were used. The chief object of study in them
is their adjustment to interests, their relation to welfare, and their
coordination in a harmonious system of life policy. For the men of the
time there are no "bad" mores. What is traditional and current is the
standard of what ought to be. The masses never raise any question about
such things. If a few raise doubts and questions, this proves that the
folkways have already begun to lose firmness and the regulative element
in the mores has begun to lose authority. This indicates that the
folkways are on their way to a new adjustment. The extreme of folly,
wickedness, and absurdity in the mores is witch persecutions, but the
best men of the seventeenth century had no doubt that witches existed,
and that they ought to be burned. The religion, statecraft,
jurisprudence, philosophy, and social system of that age all contributed
to ma