Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/148

 private opinion: it is family-opinion, or group-opinion.

In most matters the child adopts the moral standards of his family or whatever social group is most prominent in his environment. If he comes in contact with more than one social group, he may find that the general standards which they employ differ in startling respects. But he will also become aware of an underlying agreement. As his parents' judgments differed in some respects but agreed in most, so the moral judgments of the various social groups differ in certain matters but are in general agreement. This underlying unity expresses itself in "public opinion" or "social convention."

Social convention supplies the standard to which most of the growing child's judgments conform. There is no more conventional creature than the adolescent. He adopts his manners and customs from current convention, he follows it with minute care in the colour of his tie and the way in which he parts his hair. In fashions and manners the boy and girl are exceedingly sensitive to its decrees. They would not dream of questioning its authority. In more distinctly moral matters, too, social convention seems to be the infallible criterion of goodness and badness. The youth condemns what the convention of his "set" condemns. A man is approved as a "ripper" or stigmatised as a "blighter," in accordance with this convention. Social convention becomes the only standard of moral judgment. The youth judges that a certain action, e.g. cheating at cards, is wrong, because social convention decrees that it is wrong.