djustment of
competing individual interests--and on the basis of a widely
considered social welfare. Customs are _social_, they are
binding on all; they apply to all, and to the extent that they do
promote welfare, they promote, within limits, the welfare
of all. A man conforming to custom is thereby consulting
something other than his arbitrary caprice or personal desire.
On the level of customary morality, action through
conformity to custom is referred to a wider context than
unconsidered individual impulse; it is, for better or worse,
performed with reference to the group with whose standards
it is in conformity. It is the beginning of the socialization
of human interests. Though unconsciously, the man conforming
to a custom is considering his fellows, and the values
and traditions which have become current among them.

Customs, moreover, are the first invasion of moral chaos.
They establish enduring standards; they give common and
permanent bases of action. It is only through the establishment
and transmission of customary standards that one generation
is in any way superior to its predecessors. Customs,
in civilized life, include all the established effective
ways of civilization, its arts, its sciences, its industries, and
its useful modes of cooeperation.

If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is
obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the
death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if a plague
took them off all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact
that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission
of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric.
Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see
that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized
group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 4.]

In all levels of civilization, there is a conscious transmission
of those social habits which are regarded as of importance.
If this transmission were suddenly to cease, not
only would each generation have to start afresh, but it would
be altogether impossible for it to grow to maturity.

THE DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY. While custom is thus
valuable as a moral agent in establishing standards of social
life and rendering them continuous and enduring, a morality
that is completely based upon it has serio