No one can predict how far such struggles
may go in the future toward undoing the socializing process which at
best has so many obstacles to meet and moves so slowly. Many forces
are at work, however, for moral uplift. The spread of education, teaching
men to think, to discern evils, and to comprehend the reasons for right
conduct, the increasing influence of public opinion through newspapers
and magazines, the growing number of organizations working to eradicate
evils, the gradual increase of wise legislation, the reviving moral
pressure of the Christian Church such signs of the times should give
us courage as well as show us where we can take hold to help.
Morality is not static, a cut-and-dried system to be obeyed or neglected,
but a set of experiments, being gradually worked out by mankind, a
dynamic, progressive instrument which we can help ourselves to forge.
There is room yet for moral genius; we are yet in the early and formative
stage of human morality. We should not be content with past achievement,
with the contemporary standards of our fellows. If we give our keenest
thought and our earnest effort, there is no knowing what noble heights
of morality we may be helping the future to attain.
Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. IV. Hobhouse, op. cit, part II,
chaps. II, VIII. Westermarck, op. cit, chap. VII. Sutherland, op.
cit, vol. II, chaps. XIX-XXI. W. G. Sumner, Folkways, chaps. I,
II, XI.
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