Excerpt from Social Aspects of Christian MoralityWe open a book and read a few pages of an original mind, we say to ourselves This is 'what I myself have often thought, yet never could express so well in words or give it a local habitation. We find a large body of truth ready-made for every learner, and no man, not even the most original genius, creates anew the whole substance of his own thought. The solidarity of our knowledge is a fact patent to all.Nor is the solidarity of our conduct less evi dent. We inherit traditions from the family, the Church, the nation. We are taught to speak in a language which is already the possession of others and holds in its words a whole world of associa tion. Language, like society, is a social medium connecting us with other races who have expressed their ideas by Similar sounds. Further, from parents, brothers, sisters and teachers we begin to acquire our notions of propriety, of kindness, of duty. The nursery and the playground fill us with sentiments of honour and justice. School and college, shop and office are all institutions that contribute to our fitness for acting well our part, and shape our characters into the men we are to be. So powerful is the in¿uence of this whole social environment that it is with difficulty we can afterwards escape from its in¿uence and assert our independent judgment.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.