Approvals and disapprovals become fixed to acts, in the first place, because of some supposed danger or utility they possess. But whether the acts are really socially useful or not, approvals and censures once fixed tend to remain habitual, even though the conditions which first called them forth are utterly changed. We are to-day still more shocked by errors in etiquette than in logic; we are still horrified by the infringement of a law which, if we stopped to consider it, is not now, if it ever was, of any genuine service to mankind. In advanced societies approvals are not always reserved for the habitual. Certainly in science original research and discovery are generally welcomed. In art originality is cherished, at least by the discriminating.[1] Variation in action is for reasons discussed in other connections less generally welcomed. But in advanced societies, criticism and reflection upon social institutions and habits may themselves come to be sanctioned and encouraged. Already we are beginning to endow the scientific study of government and industrial relations, and regarding with favor genuine inquiry into the possibilities of progress. [Footnote 1: Even in art most people's approvals and disapprovals are fixed by what is called "good taste," which consists not infrequently in approving what other people approve. AEsthetic approval thus becomes approval of the customarily recognized. It took a Ruskin to make the neglected genius of Turner fashionable. Keats and Byron were bitterly attacked by the orthodox critics of their generation.] IMPORTANCE OF RELATING PRAISE AND BLAME TO SOCIALLY IMPORTANT CONDUCT. What people approve and disapprove, if their approval becomes sufficiently emphatic, is fixed by law. Law is the official and permanent preservation and enforcement of public approval and condemnation. When certain acts are regarded as of crucial importance, the group does not depend on the precarious effectiveness of public opinion, but deliberately attaches punishments to the performance of undesired acts, and, more infrequently, rewards to the practices of others. Most of our laws are enforcement of social condemnations, for the performance or the non-performance of specific acts, rather than direct encouragements of action. But which laws will be passed depends in the first place on social approval or public opinion. And if, as happens in our complicated political machinery, laws are passed which have not the sanction of widespread public approval, they remain "dead letters."