ns are strong that rules of
conduct are not inherent in the human mind, that men become moral to the
extent that they are taught the principles of justice, and grow
one-sided in their ideas of virtue through incompleteness in their moral
education. What we call sinfulness is largely a matter of custom and
convention. Men cannot properly be said to sin when their actions are
checked by no conscientious scruples, and what one people would consider
atrocious instances of wrong-doing, might be looked upon as innocent and
even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. Religion has
much to do with this. The human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the
Aztec Indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds,
obligations which they owed to their gods. Yet this people had attained
to some of the refined practices and moral ideas of civilization.

The leading principles of correct human conduct are few and simple. They
were arrived at early in the history of human thought, and little has
since been added to them. They arose as results of human experience, as
necessary principles of restraint in developing communities, and were
nearly all extant in prehistoric times as the unwritten laws of social
organization. What creed-makers did was to put these ancient axioms of
morality on record, and offer them to the world as codes of religious
observance. They could not have been of primitive origin, since the most
of them do not exist among the savage tribes still with us. There is
nothing, indeed, to show that any idea of sinfulness exists in the minds
of the lowest savages, the rules of conduct which they possess being
such regulations as are necessary to the existence of the most
undeveloped community.

Of the various codes of morals, much the best known to us is that given
to the Israelites by Moses, the famous "Ten Commandments." The most of
these--as of all such codes--were evidently legal in origin, rules
necessary for the existence of a civilized society, restrictions
controlling the conduct of men toward one another. It was the
creed-makers who first gave such legal restrictions the strength of
moral obligations, and announced that their infraction would be punished
by divine agencies, even if they should escape human retribution.

Many hurtful acts, indeed, came to be viewed as crimes alike against God
and man, and punishable in the interests of both. Political and moral
obligations thus shaded together;