traditional morality, or, as he called it, herd-morality, the morality of the crowd.  These two moralities are necessarily opposed to each other, but, we have to remember, they are both equally sound and equally indispensable, not only to those who accept them but to the community which they both contribute to hold in vital theoretical balance.  We have seen them both, for instance, applied to the question of prostitution; traditional morality defends prostitution, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the marriage system which it regards as sufficiently precious to be worth a sacrifice, while ideal morality refuses to accept the necessity of prostitution, and looks forward to progressive changes in the marriage system which will modify and diminish prostitution.

But altogether outside theoretical morality, or the question of what people “ought” to do, there remains practical morality, or the question of what, as a matter of fact, people actually do.  This is the really fundamental and essential morality.  Latin mores and Greek aethos both refer to custom, to the things that are, and not to the things that “ought” to be, except in the indirect and secondary sense that whatever the members of the community, in the mass, actually do, is the thing that they feel they ought to do.  In the first place, however, a moral act was not done because it was felt that it ought to be done, but for reasons of a much deeper and more instinctive character.[258] It was not first done because it was felt it ought to be done, but it was felt it “ought” to be done because it had actually become the custom to do it.

The actions of a community are determined by the vital needs of a community under the special circumstances of its culture, time, and land.  When it is the general custom for children to kill their aged parents that custom is always found to be the best not only for the community but even for the old people themselves, who desire it; the action is both practically moral and theoretically moral.[259] And when, as among ourselves, the aged are kept alive, that action is also both practically and theoretically moral; it is in no wise dependent on any law or rule opposed to the taking of life, for we glory in the taking of life under the patriotic name of “war,” and are fairly indifferent to it when involved by the demands of our industrial system; but the killing of the aged no longer subserves any social need and their preservation ministers to our civilized emotional needs.  The killing of a man is indeed notoriously an act which differs widely in its moral value at different periods and in different countries.  It was quite moral in England two centuries ago and less, to kill a man for trifling offences against property, for such punishment commended itself as desirable to the general sense of the educated community.  To-day it would be regarded as highly immoral.  We are even yet only beginning to doubt the morality of condemning to death and imprisoning for life an unmarried girl who destroyed her infant at birth, solely actuated, against all her natural impulses, by the primitive instinct of self-defense.  It cannot be said that we have yet begun to doubt the morality of killing men in war, though we no longer approve of killing women and children, or even non-combatants generally.  Every age or land has its own morality.