ABSTRACT

This chapter explains why members of the population become "sinners" or "saints" or else retain their earlier status under the stress of calamity. The concrete factors determining why some members of the population are transformed into irreligious and demoralized profligates, whereas others become more religious and ethical, are many and diverse, including the biological constitution, age, and sex, the degree of exposure of individuals to dangers and hardships, and the like. However, these conditions are subsidiary, local, and temporal, not the fundamental selective factors. This chapter explains why the behavior of persons with partly transcendental and partly sensory norms tends to remain fairly static under calamity conditions, "decent," devoid of extremes, neither "hot nor cold". The positive ethico-religious movement thus increasingly checked the atheism, licentiousness, and antisocial trend of the negative movement, sobered it, and made it constructive rather than destructive.