isms without reserve
on the doctrine: To the victors the spoils; to the vanquished the woe!
If two parties got into a controversy about such a question as whether
Christ and his apostles lived by beggary, they understood that the
victorious party in the controversy would burn the defeated party. That
was the rule of the game and they went into it on that understanding.

In all these matters the mores of the time set the notions of what was
right, or those limits within which conduct must always be kept. No one
blamed the conduct on general grounds of wrong and excess, or of broad
social inexpediency. The mores of the time were absolutely imperative as
to some matters (e.g. duties of church ritual), but did not give any
guidance as to the matters here mentioned. In fact, the mores prevented
any unfavorable criticism of those matters or any independent judgment
about them.

+576. Bundling.+ One of the most extraordinary instances of what the
mores can do to legitimize a custom which, when rationally judged, seems
inconsistent with the most elementary requirements of the sex taboo, is
bundling. In Latin Europe generally, especially amongst the upper
classes, it is not allowed that a young man and a young woman shall be
alone together even by day, and the freer usage in England, and still
more in the United States, is regarded as improper and contrary to good
manners. In the latter countries two young people, if alone together, do
not think of transgressing the rules of propriety as set by custom in
the society. Such was the case also with night visits. Although the
custom was free, and although better taste and judgment have abolished
it, yet it was _defined_ and regulated, and was never a proof of
licentious manners. It is found amongst uncivilized people, but is
hardly to be regarded as a survival in higher civilization. Christians,
in the third and fourth centuries,[1847] practiced it, even without the
limiting conditions which were set in the Middle Ages. Having determined
to renounce sex, as an evil, they sought to test themselves by extreme
temptation. It was a test or proof of the power of moral rule over
natural impulse.[1848] "It was a widely spread custom in both the east
and the west of the Roman empire to live with virgins. Distinguished
persons, including one of the greatest bishops of the empire, who was
also one of the greatest theologians, joined in the custom. Public
opinion in the church judged them ligh