^{page 407 note 1} This curious effect is fairly familiar in everyday life. Hardly in any other sphere have words such an influence as they exercise in moral experience.They appear to be regarded at times not as symbols, but as the very facts denoted, or at least as inseparable from these facts. Some people seem even to suppose that morality consists solely of the terms in which the moral life has found expression, as if language could wholly contain and had exhaustivelyconveyed all that moral experience is. This partly accounts for the reluctance which most people have to analyse and discuss morality, and for their incapacity to think about morality with detachment and impartiality. It also accounts for the difficulty in finding hospitality for new moral terms coined as the result of a fuller development of the moral life, e.g., generosity to enemies, humility of mind. They appear at first as an interference with the current moral order; they are an obstacle or “foolishness.”

^{page 409 note 1} Hence customs which secure stability at the cost of other important elements of human welfare will in course of time be found to be bad customs. This gives rise to the revolt against custom. But it seems meaningless to describe any custom as “inherently bad.”

^{page 412 note 1} Tucker, : Light of Nature, II, p. 597.Google Scholar

^{page 415 note 1} Cp. Grote, J.: A Treatise on the Moral Ideals, p. 420.Google Scholar

^{page 417 note 1} It seems worth noting that the family institution is never so stable as in a country where tradition animates its life, and that the absence of the influence of family tradition of some kind on the individuals’ moral life is generally an impoverishment of moral resources, and in many cases means irreparable loss. It is also significant that where respect for family tradition wanes, respect for the existing order of family life seems invariably to decline.Again, where revolutions in society bring the family traditions of any section of the community to contempt or to ruin, the result seems invariably to involve moral chaos in the whole society. Whether the contempt is caused by the arrogance of distinguished families or by the envy and jealousy of the rabble, matters not: the effect is the same. Where, on the other hand, a revolution leaves untouched the family tradition and what it implies, the social order as a whole is not endangered, and the community will quickly survive the upheaval. This observation seems confirmed, if we contrast the course of revolution in France in the eighteenth century with that in England in the seventeenth century, or in France itself in the nineteenth century; or, again, the course of contemporary revolution in Russia with that in Germany in recent years.A society may survive the loss of its customs and customary traditions, for custom can be replaced by law; but the loss of family tradition undermines the very foundations of the lives of individuals on which all social structures rest.

^{page 418 note 1} By Wallas: Our Social Heritage.