Published May 15, 1910 Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHANGES IN THE CENSUS METHODS FOR THE CENSUS OF THE OUTLOOK FOR AMERICAN STATISTICS, Walter F. Wilcox THE SOCIAL MARKING SYSTEM, Franklin H. Giddings Concluding Remarks of Mr. Ellwood RELIGION AND THE MORES1 WILLIAM G. SUMNER Mohammedanism, Romanism, and Protestantism contain systems of world-philosophy which have been deduced from religious dogmas. The world-philosophy is in each case removed by several steps of deduction from the religious postulates. In each case customs have grown up from the unavoidable compromise between metaphysical dogmas and interests, and these customs, so far as they inhere in essential traits of human nature, or in fundamental conditions of human life, or as far as they have taken on the sanctity of wide and ancient authority so that they seem to be above discussion, are the mores. Does a Roman Catholic, or a Mohammedan, or a Protestant child begin by learning the dogmas of his religion and then build a life-code on them? Not at all. He begins by living in, and according to, the mores of his family and societal environment. The vast mass of men in each case never do anything else but thus imbibe a character from the environment. If they learn the religious dogmas at all, it is superficially, negligently, erroneously. They are trained in the ritual, habituated to the usages, imbued with the notions, of the societal environment. They hear and repeat the proverbs, sayings, and maxims which are current in it. They perceive what is admired, ridiculed, abominated, desired by the people about them. They learn the code of conduct-what is considered stupid, smart, stylish, clever, or foolish, and they form themselves on these ideas. They get their standards from the standards of their environment. Behind this, but far behind it for all but the scholars, are the history and logic by which 1 Address of the President of the American Sociological Society at its fourth annual meeting in New York, December, 1909. the mores are connected with the religious facts or dogmas, and when the scholars investigate the history and logic they find that the supposed history is a tissue of myths and legends and that the logic is like a thread broken at a hundred points, twisted into innumerable windings, and snarled into innumerable knots. The But now it follows that the mores are affected all the time by changes in environmental conditions and societal growth, and by changes in the arts, and they follow these influences without regard to religious institutions or doctrines, or, at most, compromises are continually made between inherited institutions and notions on one side and interests on the other. religion has to follow the mores. In its nature, no religion ever changes. Every religion is absolute and eternal truth. It never contains any provision for its own amendment or "evolution." It would stultify itself if it should say: I am temporarily or contingently true, and I shall give way to something truer. I am a working hypothesis only. I am a constitution which may be amended whenever you please. "The faith once delivered to the saints" must claim to be perfect, and the formula itself means that the faith is changeless. A scientific or developing religion is an absurdity. But then again nothing is absolutely and eternally true. Everything must change. Religion is no exception. Therefore every religion is a resisting inertia which is being overcome by moving forces. Interests are the forces, because they respond, in men, to hunger, love, vanity, and fear, and the actual mores of a time are the resultant of the force of interests and the inertia of religion. The leaders of a period enlist on the side either of the interests or the resistance, and the mass of men float on the resultant current of the mores. Religion is tradition. It is a product of history, and it is embodied in ritual, institutions, officials, etc., which are historical. From time to time it is observed that the religious generalizations do not hold true; experience does not verify them. At last skepticism arises and new efforts of philosophy are required to re-establish the religious dogmas or to make new compromises. Philosophy appears as a force of revision |