When we speak of the attitude of youth toward ethics we mean by ethics those general ideas and rules that govern the[Pg 65] individual in the practical conduct of his or her life. These have always, in the main, had two sanctions to assist in making them pass current without being questioned by most people. One of these sanctions has been religion and the other the public opinion of the particular class or group to which the individual belonged. Backed by these sanctions, ethical ideas and codes of conduct tend to become fixed, but they are in reality never absolutely fixed. The forms may for long remain the same, but in private conduct the individual, while still outwardly conforming, may cease to be governed by them. Like the dollar, they may remain the standard of value, but their own value—that is, their purchasing power in happiness and human good—may come to vary greatly. The form, however, will not be generally questioned so long as the sanctions behind it are not brought seriously into question. In the youth of the older generation—that is, let us say, in the decade of the 1880’s—the sanctions of the established system of ethics, although being undermined, were still standing firm, to all appearance. These were the religious one of a belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God to be taken literally, and the social one of a code of conduct that belonged to the feudal rather than the industrial phase of society. It is true that Darwin had been writing for twenty years, but such a book as Mrs. Ward’s Robert Elsmere was considered too dangerous for young people to read, and, although the Industrial Revolution had occurred, woman’s sphere in the only classes that were supposed to count in those days was still the home. Very few girls went to college, and even for them the intellectual problems set were not particularly disquieting. The individual youth of either sex[Pg 66] may not have been religious or consciously interested in the social sanction for ethical ideas, but on the other hand there was nothing in upbringing or education to make them seriously question the accepted code and standards. Theoretically, that the Bible said “thou shalt not” or that one’s group frowned was pretty generally a sufficient guide to conduct. What, in practice, that conduct may have been only the memories of the older generation can reveal. II