Read "The Little Barefoot" by Berthold Auerbach online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is not morality that governs society, but a hardened form of the same, called custom.
As society now exists, an infringement of morality is more easily pardoned than a departure from custom. Happy the time and the people, when custom and morality will be one and the same! All differences, great and small, in the mass, and in private life, have their source in the contradiction of these two -- and the hardened form of custom soon stamps anew the inward flow of morality with its own impress and form.