Morality has been defined in many ways.  It has been called “a regulation and control of immediate promptings of impulses in conformity with some prescribed conduct”; as “the organization of activity with reference to a system of fundamental values.”  Dewey says, “Interest in community welfare, an interest that is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional—­an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these principles into execution—­is the moral habit."[17] Palmer defines it as “the choice by the individual of habits of conduct that are for the good of the race.”  All these definitions point to control on the part of the individual as one essential of morality.

Morality is not, then, a matter primarily of mere conduct.  It involves conduct, but the essence of morality lies deeper than the act itself; motive, choice, are involved as well.  Mere law-abiding is not morality in the strict sense of the word.  One may keep the laws merely as a matter of blind habit.  A prisoner in jail keeps the laws.  A baby of four keeps the laws, but in neither case could such conduct be called moral.  In neither of these cases do we find “control” by the individual of impulses, nor “conscious choice” of conduct.  In the former compulsion was the controlling force, and in the second blind habit based on personal satisfaction.  Conduct which outwardly conforms to social law and social progress is unmoral rather than moral.  A moment’s consideration will suffice to convince any one that the major part of conduct is of this non-moral type.  This is true of adults and necessarily true of children.  As Hall says, most of the supposedly moral conduct of the majority of men is blind habit, not thoughtful choosing.  In so far as we are ruled by custom, by tradition, in so far as we do as the books or the preacher says, or do as we see others do, without principles to guide us, without thinking, to that extent the conduct is likely to be non-moral.  This is the characteristic reaction of the majority of people.  We believe as our fathers believed, we vote the same ticket, hold in horror the same practices, look askance on the same doctrines, cling to the same traditions.  Morality, on the other hand, is rationalized conduct.  Now this non-moral conduct is valuable so far as it goes.  It is a conservative force, making for stability, but it has its dangers.  It is antagonistic to progress.  So long as the conditions surrounding the non-moral individual remain unchanged, he will be successful in dealing with them, but if conditions change, if he is confronted by a new situation, if strong temptation comes, he has nothing with which to meet it, for his conduct was blind.  It is the person whose conduct is non-moral that suffers collapse on the one hand, or becomes a bigot on the other, when criticism attacks what he held as true or right.  Morality requires that men have a reason for the faith that is in them.