The _mores_ are powerful engines of societal selection. The most important fact about the _mores_ is the power which they exert over the individual. He does not know their source. He is born into them. He accepts them in his early years uncritically. His habits and character are moulded by them. If in adult life he challenges them, he is ostracized by his group, labeled unpatriotic, and even trodden under foot.[XVIII-16] The _mores_ develop powerful watch-words, slogans, and even epithets of contempt and disapproval which only the most independent and courageous individuals dare to face. 14. Ideals are entirely unscientific, declared Sumner.[XVIII-17] They are phantasies little connected with fact. They are often formed to pacify the restless, or to escape settling a question justly in the present. The “poor” are told to look to the next life for their rewards. The radicals are urged to accept the Christian virtues of meekness and lowliness. Ideals are useful, chiefly, in homiletics, in self-education _via_ auto-suggestion, in satisfying vanity, in marriage. In these observations, Sumner undoubtedly pointed out genuine weaknesses in ideals. He underestimated the psychological fact that they spring from the very real affective phases of consciousness, and that they can be projected rationally. He was right, however, in deploring the chasm which exists between ideals and practices, and in showing how ideals may become encysted in literature although not in the _mores_. “The Greeks proved that people could sink very low while talking very nobly.” Immorality is conduct contrary to the _mores_ of the time and place.[XVIII-18] Chastity is conformity to the current taboo on the sex relation. “Modesty is reserve of behavior and sentiment.” Even “nakedness is never shameful when it is unconscious,” that is, when there is no consciousness of a difference between fact and the rule set by the _mores_. Sumner deduced an important principle when he asserted that the “_mores_ can make anything right.” The _mores_ give usages a certain order and form, and cover them with a protecting mantle of propriety. The sanction of the _mores_ is utilized by the class in power in order to maintain the established régime, even though it be one of injustice. Sumner decried the importance which is ordinarily attached to book learning,[XVIII-19] because it is addressed to the intellect rather than to the feelings which are the springs of action. The real education is that which comes through personal influence and example. It is derived from “the habits and atmosphere of a school, not from the school textbooks.”