mere parasites devoted to sport or society, with never a qualm of conscience for their selfishness.  The old standards need the constant infusion of new blood; our consciences need to be adjusted to our new relations and deeper insight. [Footnote:  Cf.  Rosa, Sin and Society, p. 14:  “One might suppose that an exasperated public would sternly castigate these modern sins.  But the fact is, the very qualities that lull the conscience of the sinner blind the eyes of the onlookers.  People are sentimental; and bastinado wrongdoing not according to its harmfulness, but according to the infamy that has come to attach to it.  Undiscerning, they chastise with scorpions the old authentic sins, but spare the new.  They do not see that blackmail is piracy, that embezzlement is theft, that speculation is gambling that deleterious adulteration is murder.  The cloven hoof hides in patent leather; and today, as in Hosea’s time, the people ’are destroyed for lack of knowledge.’”]

(4) Custom-morality tends to literalism, a mere formal observance of law or custom without the true spirit of service, without any inward sweetness or power.  Christ’s condemnation of the Pharisees will occur to every one; the parable of the Pharisee and publican, and that of the widow’s mite, among others, are classic illustrations of a cut-and dried formalism in morality.  Such a legalism Paul found could not save him.  And forever the prophets and spiritual leaders of men have had to burst the bonds of tradition to awaken a real love of and devotion to the good.  The letter killeth, and a punctilious observance of rules may choke out the aspirations of the soul.

(5) Finally, conflicts between customs inevitably arise.  Which shall a man obey?  The moral perplexity thus caused gives a great deal of its poignancy to the tragedy of life.  When one accepted ideal pulls us one way, and another standard, to which we have given allegiance, calls us the other, when we cry out with Desdemona, “I do perceive here a divided duty,” the only solution lies in the development of insight and a recognition of the transition-nature of much of our accepted code.  If for no other reason, to avoid these conflicts of ideals we must comprehend the ultimate aims of morality and take existing standards with a sort of tentative allegiance.  It should be clear, then, that the individualizing of conscience, which has been going on observably in recent times, is, in spite of its dangers, a necessary and desirable process.  Dewey and Tufts, ethics, chaps, V. IX.  W. Bagehot, physics and politics, chaps.  II, vi.  F. Paulsen, system of ethics, part ii, chap.  V, sec. 6.  S. E. Mezes, ethics, chap, vii, pp. 164-83.  J. H. Coffin, the socialized conscience, pp. 12-23.

CHAPTER VI

CAN WE BASE MORALITY UPON CONSCIENCE?