t, and becomes an individual
trait or possession in the form which it ultimately takes.

+503. The great variety in the codes.+ All the topics which have been
treated in this chapter are branches or outreachings of the social code.
They show how deep is the interest of human beings in the sex taboo, and
in the self-perpetuation of society. Men have always tried, and are
trying still, to solve the problem of well living in this respect. The
men, the women, the children, and the society have joint and several
interests, and the complication is great. At the present time
population, race, marriage, childbirth, and the education of children
present us our greatest problems and most unfathomable mysteries. All
the contradictory usages of chastity, decency, propriety, etc., have
their sense in some assumed relation to the welfare of society. To some
extent they have come out of caprice, but chiefly they have issued from
experience of good and ill, and are due to efforts to live well. Thus we
may discern in them policies and philosophies, but they never proceed to
form any such generalities as do rationally adopted motives. There is
logic in the folkways, but never rationality. Given the premises, in a
notion of kin, for instance, and the deductions are made directly and
generally correctly, but the premises could never be verified, and they
were oftener false than true. Each group took its own way, making its
own assumptions, and following its own logic. So there was great variety
and discord in their policies and philosophies, but within the area of a
custom, during its dominion, its authority is absolute; and hence,
although the usages are infinitely various, directly contradictory, and
mutually abominable, they are, within their area of dominion, of equal
value and force, and they are the standards of what is true and right.
The groups have often tried to convert each other by argument and
reason. They have never succeeded. Each one's reasons are the tradition
which it has received from its ancestors. That does not admit of
argument. Each tries to convince the other by going outside of the
tradition to some philosophic standard of truth. Then the tradition is
left in full force. Shocking as it must be to any group to be told that
there is no rational ground for any one of them to convert another group
to its mores (because this seems to imply, although it does not, that
their folkways are not better than those of other grou