Conventional Behaviour:
An example for conventional behaviour is the way we greet each other, which depends on the way people greet each other socially. In that part of the world in western countries, shaking hands is a conventional behaviour, where as greeting with folded hands is followed in our country.
A moral act:
A moral act must be our own act; must spring from our own will. If we act mechanically, there is no moral content in our act. Such action would be immoral, if we think it proper to act like a machine and do so. For, in doing so, we use our discrimination. We should bear in mind the distinction between acting mechanically and acting intentionally.
It may be moral of a king to pardon a culprit. But the messenger bearing the order of pardon plays only a mechanical part in the king’s moral act. But if the messenger were to bear the king’s order, considering it to be /his duty, his action would be a moral one.
It is not enough that an act done by us is in itself good; it should have been done with the intention to do good. That is to say, whether an act is moral or otherwise depends upon the intention of the doer. Two men may have done exactly the same thing; but the act of one may be moral, and that of the other the contrary. Take, for instance, a man who out of great pity feeds the poor and another who does the same, but with the motive of winning prestige or with some such selfish end. Though the action is the same, the act of the one is moral and that of the other nonmoral.
There is no morality in living a simple and unpretentious life if I have not the means to live otherwise. But plain, simple living would be moral if, though wealthy, I think of all the wants and miseries in the world about me- and feel that I ought to live a plain, simple life and not one of ease and luxury.
Likewise it is only selfish, and not moral, of an employer to sympathize with his employees or to pay them higher wages lest they leave him. It would be moral if the employer wished well of them and treated them kindly realizing how he owed his prosperity to them. This means that for an act to be moral it has to be free from fear and compulsion.
