This is not surprising. We are born into a moral environment as into an all-embracing atmosphere. From the cradle to the grave, we walk with our heads in a cloud of exhortations and prohibitions. From our earliest years we have been urged to make decisions and to act, and we have been furnished with general maxims to guide our action. When, therefore, we approach the solution of a moral problem, we do not, as a rule, acutely feel our fitness to solve it, even though we may be judged quite unfit by others. This unruffled confidence in one's possession of an adequate supply of indubitable moral truth may be found in men who differ widely in their degree of intelligence and in the extent of their information. Some individuals seem born to it. We may come upon it in the ethical philosopher; we may meet it in the man of science, who knows that it has taken him a quarter of a century to fit himself to be an authority in matters chemical or physical, but who wanders in his hours of leisure into the field of ethics and has no hesitation in proposing radical reforms. But it is more natural to look for the unwavering confidence which knows no questionings among persons of restricted outlook, who have been brought into contact with but one set of opinions. It is characteristic of the child, of the uncultivated classes in all communities, of whole communities primitive in their culture and relatively unenlightened. 14. THE AWAKENING.--Manifestly, even the beginnings of ethical science are an impossibility where such a spirit prevails. Where there are no doubts, no questionings, there can be no attempt at rational construction. Fortunately for the cause of human enlightenment there are forces at work which tend to arouse men from this state of lethargy. Horizons are broadened, new ideas make their appearance, there is a conflict of authorities, the birth of a doubt, and, finally, a more or less articulate appeal to Reason. Even a child is capable of seeing that paternal and maternal injunctions and reactions are not wholly alike, and it sets them off against each other. Nor have all the children in the home precisely the same nature. One is temperamentally frank and open, but unsympathetic; another is affectionate, and prone to lying as the sparks fly upward. The virtues and vices are not spontaneously arranged in the same order of importance by children, and differences of opinion may arise. Nor does it take the child long to discover that the law of its own home is not identical with that of the house next door. At school the experience is repeated on a larger scale; many homes are represented, and, besides that, two codes of law claim allegiance, the code of the schoolboy and that of the master. They may be by no means in accord.