Moses may have helped to foster a social environment in which gossiping about one's neighbors retained its power to change behavior, but he did not invent it. It obviously preceded him by millenia. And it only required this biological basis, the universal capacity to feel shame and a sense of social consciousness -- sweaty palms and flushed cheeks -- for his rules to be effective. Ethical mandates do not magically create this capacity in people -- as extremists on one side, touting political correctness, and extremists on the other, vaunting religious values, seem to suppose. The capacity is there and the threshold for activating ethical self-consciousness is well below the level where it is supposed to exist according to most brands of theodicy. About the only thing certain not to meet the threshold for producing a morally capable human being, short of inherent psychological defect or the collapse of civil society, is grossly irresponsible parenting. Which, finally, one is almost tempted to concede, the state does have an interest in helping to avoid.