nventional assumptions with which the people who
believed in them approached them. Modern Hindoos conventionalize the
stories of their mythology.[81] What the gods are said to have done is
put under other standards than those now applied to men. Everything in
the mythology is on a plane by itself. It follows that none of the
rational or ethical judgments are formed about the acts of the gods
which would be formed about similar acts of men, and the corruption of
morals which would be expected as a consequence of the stories and
dramas is prevented by the conventionalization. There is no deduction
from what gods do to what men may do. The Greeks of the fifth century
B.C. rationalized on their mythology and thereby destroyed it. The
mediaeval church claimed to be under a conventionalization which would
prevent judgment on the church and ecclesiastics according to current
standards. Very many people heeded this conventionalization, so that
they were not scandalized by vice and crime in the church. This
intervention of conventionalization to remove cases from the usual
domain of the mores into a special field, where they can be protected
and tolerated by codes and standards modified in their favor, is of very
great importance. It accounts for many inconsistencies in the mores. In
this way there may be nakedness without indecency, and tales of adultery
without lewdness. We observe a conventionalization in regard to the
Bible, especially in regard to some of the Old Testament stories. The
theater presents numerous cases of conventionalization. The asides,
entrances and exits, and stage artifices, require that the spectators
shall concede their assent to conventionalities. The dresses of the
stage would not be tolerated elsewhere. It is by conventionalization
that the literature and pictorial representations of science avoid
collision with the mores of propriety, decency, etc. In all artistic
work there is more or less conventionalization. Uncivilized people, and
to some extent uneducated people amongst ourselves, cannot tell what a
picture represents or means because they are not used to the
conventionalities of pictorial art. The ancient Saturnalia and the
carnival have been special times of license at which the ordinary social
restrictions have been relaxed for a time by conventionalization. Our
own Fourth of July is a day of noise, risk, and annoyance, on which
things are allowed which would not be allowed at any other time.