And, in helping him to think, the reference to the virtue of cleanliness has its value. Cleanliness is prized by those who know little of hygiene. If a society cannot be happy without cleanliness, for whatever reason, is it not the duty of the individual to be clean? But _how_ clean should he be? There are virtues--I use the word here broadly to cover approved habits-- which seem to have a very direct reference to chronology and geography. They are _conventional virtues_; they suit a given society, and satisfy its actual social will. A Vermont housekeeper in an _igloo_ would be an intolerable nuisance. Imagine an unbroken succession of New England house-cleanings with the inhabitants of the house sitting in despair in the snow outside. Those who live north of the Alps are sometimes criticized for dipping Zwieback into their tea. Those who live south of the Alps eat macaroni in ways revolting to other nations. A very pretty Frenchwoman, devouring snails after the approved fashion of the locality, has driven me out of an excellent restaurant. And the world opens its eyes in wonder when it sees the well-bred Anglo-Saxon dispose of his asparagus. There is a little-recognized virtue called toleration. St. Ambrose was a wise man when he advised St. Augustine to do, when in Rome, as the Romans do. Of course, he did not mean this to apply to robbery or to murder. He was giving an involuntary recognition to the doctrine that there are conventional virtues, worthy of our notice, as well as virtues of heavier caliber and wider range. CHAPTER XXXIV THE ETHICS OF THE STATE 154. THE AIM OF THE STATE.--He who has resolved to devote but a single chapter to the Ethics of the State must deliberately sacrifice nine- tenths, at least, of the material--some of it very good material, and some of it most curious and interesting--which has heaped itself together on his hands in the course of his reading and thinking. I have resolved to write only the one chapter. The State is the background of the individual, the scaffold which supports his moral life. Without it, he may be a being; but he is scarcely recognizable as a _human_ being. It has made the individual what he is, and it is the medium in which he can give expression to the nature which he now possesses.