from the everyday usages with their ethics, and
are judged by an arbitrary standard. In the English translation of the
Bible words and phrases are used which are archaic and now under taboo
in everyday life. Our children have to be taught that "that is in the
Bible," that is, they have to learn the conventionalization by which the
archaic forms are covered. The words in the Bible are not subject to
criticism, and they cannot be cited to justify similar usage in common
life.

+600. Mores of Hindostan.+ The phenomena which are presented in
Hindostan, when studied from our standpoint, show how completely
different may be the estimate of things according to use and wont. The
phenomena are very different in character. Some of them are cases of
degeneracy and aberration of customs, after they have been discarded by
the mores, have become vicious, and have fallen into the hands of
abandoned persons who have given up all position inside the mores.
Others of these customs show how old usages, when brought in question,
lose innocence. Consciousness and reflection produce doubt and then
shame. Sometimes things which are private or secret by convention come
in contact with things which are secret by vice. All the phenomena in
Hindostan show how completely the moral effect depends on the integrity
or decay of conventionalization. The conventionalization is still so
strong that the effects on public morals which we might expect are not
produced. Public manners are marked by decency and propriety and the
society is not vicious.[1945] Things which exist under conventionalization
never furnish grounds for an ethical judgment on the group which
practices them.

+601. Mexican mores. Drunkenness.+ In Mexico also there were goddesses
of erotic passion to whom men and women were consecrated. Courtesans
sometimes immolated themselves in the service of the goddess. The notion
of virtue in resistance to passion existed, but the goddess, like the
Greek Venus, resented any effort to escape her sway and exerted herself
to defeat it.[1946] The Mayas did not maintain a severe form of sex
taboo and they had festivals at which that taboo was entirely
suspended.[1947] Pederasty also existed under the sanction of religion.
Young men in the training house, which was a house of lamentation and
penance, were allowed license which was contrary to the current mores of
the society, but was an old privilege of soldiers. The dances which they
performed daily