, common sense,
conscience.--Seemliness.--Cases of unseemliness.--Greek
tragedies and notions of seemliness.--Greek conduct.--
Seemliness in the Middle Ages.--Unseemly debate.--Unseemliness
of lynching, torture, etc.--Good taste.--Whence good taste is
derived.--The great variety in the codes.--Morals and
deportment.--The relation of the social codes to morals and
religion.--Rudeck's conclusions.

+438. Specification of the subject.+ The ethnographers write of a tribe
that the "morality" in it, especially of the women, is low or high, etc.
This is the technical use of morality,--as a thing pertaining to the sex
relation only or especially, and the ethnographers make their
propositions by applying our standards of sex behavior, and our form of
the sex taboo, to judge the folkways of all people. All that they can
properly say is that they find a great range and variety of usages,
ideas, standards, and ideals, which differ greatly from ours. Some of
them are far stricter than ours. Those we do not consider nobler than
ours. We do not feel that we ought to adopt any ways because they are
more strict than our traditional ones. We consider many to be excessive,
silly, and harmful. A Roman senator was censured for impropriety because
he kissed his wife in the presence of his daughter.[1380]

+439. Meaning of "immoral."+ When, therefore, the ethnographers apply
condemnatory or depreciatory adjectives to the people whom they study,
they beg the most important question which we want to investigate; that
is, What are standards, codes, and ideas of chastity, decency,
propriety, modesty, etc., and whence do they arise? The ethnographical
facts contain the answer to this question, but in order to reach it we
want a colorless report of the facts. We shall find proof that "immoral"
never means anything but contrary to the mores of the time and place.
Therefore the mores and the morality may move together, and there is no
permanent or universal standard by which right and truth in regard to
these matters can be established and different folkways compared and
criticised. Only experience produces judgments of the expediency of some
usages. For instance, ancient peoples thought pederasty was harmless and
trivial. It has been well proved to be corrupting both to individual and
social vigor, and harmful to interests, both individual and collective.
Cannibalism, polygamy, incest, harlotry, and other primitive customs
hav