nd the infringement of
those high doctrines in private, needs unfortunately not to
be illustrated. Moliere drew Tartuffe from real life.

ORIGIN AND NATURE OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. If the customs
current were adequate to adjust men to their environment,
reflection upon them might never arise. Reflection does
arise precisely because customs are not, or do not remain,
adequate. An individual is brought up to believe that certain
actions are good, and that their performance promotes
human happiness. He discovers, by an alert and unclouded
insight, that in specific cases the virtues highly regarded by
his group do not bring the felicitous results which they are
commonly and proverbially held to produce. He observes,
let us say, that meekness, humility, honesty are not modes
of adaptation that bring happy results. He observes, as
Job observed, that the wicked prosper; he notes that those
who follow the path called righteous bring unhappiness
to themselves and to others.

Or the individual's first reflection upon moral standards
may arise in his discovery that moral standards are not
absolute, that what is virtue in the Occident is vice in the
Orient, and _vice versa_. He discovers that those actions which
he regards as virtuous are so regarded by him simply because
he has been trained to their acceptance. Given another
environment, his moral revulsions and approvals might be
diametrically reversed. He makes the discovery that Protagoras
made two thousand years ago: "Man is the measure
of all things"; standards of good and evil depend on the
accidents of time, space, and circumstance. In such a discovery
an individual may well query, What _is_ the good? Not
what passes for good, but what is the essence of goodness?
What is justice? Not what is accredited justice in the courts
of law, or in the market-place, or in the easy generalizations
of common opinion. But what constitutes _justice_ essentially?
What is the _standard_ by which actions may be rated just and
unjust?

Where individuals are habituated to one single tradition
or set of customs, such questions may not arise. But where
one, through personal experience or acquaintance with history
and literature, discovers the multiplicity of standards
which have been current with regard to the just and the good
in human conduct, the search for some reasonable standard
arises. The great historical instance of the discovery of the
relativity and irrationality of customary