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Introduction

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must be looked for in the customs laws, institutions, mythologies, literatures, maxims, and religions of the different races, peoples, and ages of history.^[1] In all these there is always an ethical element; often this forms their very essence. "In every setence of the penal code," as the moralist Wilhelm wundt remarks, "there speaks the voice of an objective moral conscience." In truth all law codes, whether civil or criminal, are essentially nothing more nor less than the embodiment of man's conception of what is just and unjust. Mythologies, literatures, and philosophies are charge with moral sentiment. In religion there struggle for utterance the deepest moral feeling and convictions of the human soul.

The moral ideal The moral life fulfills itself in many ways. Every age and every race has its own moral type or ideal.^[2] This, as we shall use the term, may be defined as a group of virtues held in esteem by a given group of people or a given age. It is the accepted standard of conduct, of excellence, of character. This ideal may be a very simple thing, embracing only a few rudimentary virtues, as in the case of peoples on the lower levels of culture; or it may be a very complex thing, embracing many and refined virtues, as in the case of civilized societies in which the mutual relationships of the members are many and various.

↑ "We cannot explain morality without going to objective morality, which is expressed in the customs and laws, in the moral commands and judgements, conceptions and ideals of the race" (Frank Thilly, "Friedrich Paulsen's Ethical Works and Influence," The International Journal of Ethics for January, 1909, p. 150). And so Wundt: "The original source of ethical knowledge is the moral consciousness of man, as it finds objective expression in the universal perceptions of right and wrong, and further, in religious ideas and in customs. The most direct method for the discovery of ethical principles, is, therefore, the anthropological method. We use this term in a wider sense than is customary, to include ethnic psychology, the history of primitive man and the history of civilization, as well as the natural history of mankind" (Ethics: An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of Moral Life, tr. Gulliver and Titchener (1908), p. 19). Cf. also Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906), vol. i, pp. 158 ff.
↑ "An ideal is essential to the very existence of morality."—George Harris, Moral Evolution (1896), p. 54.

[1] "We cannot explain morality without going to objective morality, which is expressed in the customs and laws, in the moral commands and judgements, conceptions and ideals of the race" (Frank Thilly, "Friedrich Paulsen's Ethical Works and Influence," The International Journal of Ethics for January, 1909, p. 150). And so Wundt: "The original source of ethical knowledge is the moral consciousness of man, as it finds objective expression in the universal perceptions of right and wrong, and further, in religious ideas and in customs. The most direct method for the discovery of ethical principles, is, therefore, the anthropological method. We use this term in a wider sense than is customary, to include ethnic psychology, the history of primitive man and the history of civilization, as well as the natural history of mankind" (Ethics: An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of Moral Life, tr. Gulliver and Titchener (1908), p. 19). Cf. also Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906), vol. i, pp. 158 ff.

[2] "An ideal is essential to the very existence of morality."—George Harris, Moral Evolution (1896), p. 54.

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