Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/42

6 several divers kinds of morals evolve. Yet the most important distinction is that which separates the morality of the most frequent from that of the rarest fulfilment. We must not deceive ourselves as regards the motive of that moral law which exacts the hardest fulfilment as a test of morality. Self-denial is exacted, not because of its useful consequences for the individual, but in order that custom or observance, despite all individual counter tendencies and advantages, may appear to rule supreme. The individual must sacrifice himself-such is the commandment of the morality of custom. Those moralists who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, urge home to the individual the morality of self-control and abstinence as an advantage to himself an as a key to the secret of his own personal happiness, are exceptions ;-and if they do not appear to us as such, it is so because of our laving been educated under their influence. They all steer a new course, amid the loud condemnation of the representatives of a morality of custom--they detach themselves from the community, as immoral people, and are evil in tile deepest sense of the word. Thus to a virtuous Roman of the older type, every Christian whose fore- most goal was his own salvation" must have appeared evil. Wherever there is a community and, consequently, a morality of custom, the sentiment predominates that the punishment for every offence against custom falls, above all, on the community. I am referring to that