Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/44

8 causality increases, the area of the province of morality decreases; for it is certain that, by grasping and learning to think the inevitable effects as apart from chance anal all incidental contingencies, we, each time, destroy a numberless host of fantastical causalities which heretofore, the work of reality being much smaller than that of our imagination,—had passed current as foundations of customs; each time also a portion of our anxiousness and constraint is swept out of the world, and each time a portion of our reverence for the authority of customs vanishes: whereby morality in general suffers. He who, on the contrary, wishes to strengthen it, must know how to prevent results from becoming subject to control.

—The morals which prevail in a community are constantly being influenced by everybody: the majority never weary of heaping up examples for the alleged relation between cause and sequence, guilt and punishment, bearing it out as well founded and increasing its credit. Others form new observations on actions and sequences, drawing inferences and establishing rules: a small minority occasionally make objections and suffer faith, in these matters, to grow weak. But all go to work in the same rough and unscientific manner; be it a question of instances, observations or objections, of proof,