=Custom is Static.=--This difference introduces a second very important difference. In customary morality, there is no choice between being enmeshed in the net of social rules which control activity, and being an outlaw--one beyond the pale, whose hand is against every man's, and every man's against him. The extent to which social customs are regarded as of divine origin and are placed under the protection of the gods, i.e., the tendency of all sanctions to become religious and supernatural, is evidence of the binding force of institutions upon the individual. To violate them is impiety, sacrilege, and calls down the wrath of gods, as well as of men. The custom cannot be questioned. To inquire means uncertainty, and hence it is immoral, an attack upon the very foundations of the life of the group. The apparent exception, which after all exhibits the rule, is the case of great reforming heroes who demarcate epochs of history even in customary societies. Such individuals meet contemporary opposition and persecution; it is only by victory, by signal success over a rival faction at home, over plague and famine, or over an enemy abroad, that the hero is justified. Thereby it is proved that the gods are with him and sanction his changes--indeed that he is their own chosen instrument. Then the modified or new customs and institutions have all the binding sacredness and supernatural sanction of the old. It is not yet an outgrown story for the fathers to kill the prophets, and for the sons to build and adorn their tombs, and make them into shrines. =Reflection Discovers a Higher Law.=--But in so far as the individual's activity is directed by his comprehension of the _meaning_ of customs, not by his apprehension of their _existence_, so far the notion of moral progress or reform in social affairs becomes ethically important and greater moral responsibility is put upon the individual just as greater practical freedom is secured to him. For (a) the individual may set the meaning of a custom _against_ its present form; or (b) he may find the meaning of some custom much more commanding in value than that of others, and yet find that its realization is hindered by the existence of these other customs of less moral importance. On the basis of such discrimination, the abolition or, at least, the modification of certain social habits is demanded. So far as this sort of situation frequently recurs, the individual (c) becomes more or less vaguely aware that he _must not accept the current standard_ as justification of his own conduct, unless _it also_ justify itself to his own moral intelligence. The fact that it exists gives it indeed a certain _prima facie_ claim, but no ultimate moral warrant. Perhaps the custom is itself wrong--and the individual is responsible for bearing this possibility in mind.