w social actions that are as yet only practiced by a small though
growing minority of the community. Nietzsche in modern times has been a
conspicuous champion of ideal morality, the heroic morality of the
pioneer, of the individual of the coming community, against traditional
morality, or, as he called it, herd-morality, the morality of the crowd.
These two moralities are necessarily opposed to each other, but, we have
to remember, they are both equally sound and equally indispensable, not
only to those who accept them but to the community which they both
contribute to hold in vital theoretical balance. We have seen them both,
for instance, applied to the question of prostitution; traditional
morality defends prostitution, not for its own sake, but for the sake of
the marriage system which it regards as sufficiently precious to be worth
a sacrifice, while ideal morality refuses to accept the necessity of
prostitution, and looks forward to progressive changes in the marriage
system which will modify and diminish prostitution.

But altogether outside theoretical morality, or the question of what
people "ought" to do, there remains _practical morality_, or the question
of what, as a matter of fact, people actually do. This is the really
fundamental and essential morality. Latin _mores_ and Greek aethos both
refer to _custom_, to the things that are, and not to the things that
"ought" to be, except in the indirect and secondary sense that whatever
the members of the community, in the mass, actually do, is the thing that
they feel they ought to do. In the first place, however, a moral act was
not done because it was felt that it ought to be done, but for reasons of
a much deeper and more instinctive character.[258] It was not first done
because it was felt it ought to be done, but it was felt it "ought" to be
done because it had actually become the custom to do it.

The actions of a community are determined by the vital needs of a
community under the special circumstances of its culture, time, and land.
When it is the general custom for children to kill their aged parents that
custom is always found to be the best not only for the community but even
for the old people themselves, who desire it; the action is both
practically moral and theoretically moral.[259] And when, as among
ourselves, the aged are kept alive, that action is also both practically
and theoretically moral; it is in no wise dependent on any law or rule
oppo