_),
or the contrary (_Unsitten_). The men, women, and children who compose a
society at any time are the unconscious depositaries and transmitters of
the mores. They inherited them without knowing it; they are molding them
unconsciously; they will transmit them involuntarily. The people cannot
make the mores. They are made by them. Yet the group is at once makers
and made. Each one may put into the group life as much as he can, but
the group will give back to him order and determination from which he
cannot escape. The mores grow as they must grow under the conditions.
They are products of the effort of each to live as well as he can, and
they are coercions which hold and control each in his efforts to live
well. It is idle to try to get outside of this operation in order to
tell which part of it comes first and makes the other. "Our age presents
us the incredible spectacle that the dependence of the higher social
culture on the economic development is not only clearly recognized by
social science, but is proclaimed as the ideal." Social science does not
proclaim this as an ideal. It does not deal in ideals. It accepts the
dependence of culture on economic development as a fact. In fact, Rudeck
is not justified in saying (p. 426) that "culture is the unity of the
moral will in all the life phenomena of a people," and that "that people
alone is a culture people which sets before itself, as the purpose of
its entire existence, the production of the greatest possible amount of
specified moral qualities." These are notions of culture and of a
culture people which an ethical philosopher might think it fine should
be. Rudeck has just found that no such things ever have existed in
Germany; yet Germany possesses culture and the Germans are a culture
people. He is really complaining that these fine ethical notions have
never had any place in history. Such being the case, the true inference
would be that they are unrealities and ought to be discarded altogether.
Rudeck can find, in the eighteenth century, only one act of the state
which had an improving effect on "external morals." That was the
abolition of obscene playing cards, and this improving effect was not
won intentionally, but as an incidental consequence of a tax which was
imposed for revenue. The case is interesting and instructive. It is thus
alone that the state acts. It needs revenue and lays a tax. Other
consequences follow. Sometimes "moral" consequences follow. The