1112. The word "church" meant at first a local Christian congregation, but was enlarged so as to designate the whole body of Christians. In this body various tendencies of thought showed themselves from time to time, and new organizations were formed that constituted new churches in the sense that they had their own theological dogmas, ritual, and conditions of membership. Most of them had brief careers and offer nothing of interest for the history of the development of the church-idea. Gnosticism was a serious and noteworthy attempt to bridge over the gap between a good supreme God and an evil world, and was in form a church, but its philosophical and mystical sides had so much that was fanciful and grotesque or ethically dangerous that it did not commend itself to the mass, and soon ceased to exist as a separate organization, though its echoes long continued to be heard in certain Christian groups.[2045]

1113. Cults of Mithra and Isis. The Mithraic communities were wholly voluntary associations, without distinctions of birth or social position, were recognized by the State, but received no pecuniary aid from it and had no official connection with it. Perhaps this independence helped to nourish the enthusiasm that carried Mithraism from one end of the Roman Empire to the other; a church appears to flourish most on the religious side when it confines itself to religion. A more important fact was that Mithraism was a religion of redemption. It does not appear that there was any general organization of the Mithraic associations; each of these was local, probably small, had its own set of officers, and managed its own affairs.[2046] It was thus free from some of the perils that beset Christianity. It is not improbable that some of its liturgical forms were adopted by the Christian Church, but it seems itself not to have borrowed from the latter. Its weakness was its semibarbarous ritual and its polytheism; it yielded of necessity to the simpler and loftier forms of Christianity.

1114. The cult of Isis, in spite of its ethically high character and its impressive ceremonies of initiation (as described by Apuleius[2047]), did not give rise to associations like the Mithraic. It belongs to the mysteries, but had not their organization of meetings and ritual, had no brotherhoods (except those whose bond of union was devotion to this cult) and no general organization embracing the Empire. The reason for its failure in this regard appears to lie in its lack of definiteness in certain important points: it was in a sense monotheistic, since the goddess was called the supreme controller of the world of external nature and of men, but its monotheism was clouded by its connection with the old national cults and by current theological speculations—for Apuleius, it would seem, Isis was rather a name for a vague Power in nature than for a well-defined divine person, and particularly it offered no clear picture of the future and no clear hope of moral redemption, two things that were then necessary to the success of any system that aspired to supplant the popular faiths.[2048] Such lacks as these appear in the cult of Sarapis also, which never developed the characteristics of a church.

1115. Manichaeism. Of the religious movements that sprang from the contact of Christianity with the East Manichaeism was the most important on account of its great vitality. It possessed all the elements of a church, voluntary membership, independence of the State (it was always persecuted by the State), and the claim to a divine revelation of salvation. Like Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity, it owed its origin to a single founder. Its plan of organization and its ethical standards were good. Like Mithraism its basis was Persian (its rise was synchronous with the Sassanian revival of Mazdaism), but the two went different ways: the former laid stress on mystical ceremonies, the latter on moral and theological conceptions. The vogue that Manichaeism enjoyed was due, apparently, to its eclectic character: adopting the Persian dualism, it modified and expounded this by a Gnostic doctrine of aeons, which was intended to harmonize the goodness of God and the existence of evil, and it added the figure of the highest aeon, Christ, the savior of men. On the other hand, its involved and fantastic machinery led to its downfall.

1116. Two theocratic bodies that failed to reach the full church form are Islam and the Peruvian cult of the sun. The Islamic constitution is based on a sacred book, its theology and its form of public worship are borrowed from Christianity and Judaism, its private worship is individualistic, and it offers paradise to the faithful. But Islam is in essence a State religion rather than a church. Its populations belong to it by descent; its head is the Calif (now the Sultan of Turkey). Its diffusion, though due in certain cases to the superiority of its ideas and the simplicity of its customs,[2049] has yet come largely (as in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Persia, and North Africa) from social and political pressure—in some cases it has been adopted by whole nations at a blow; Mohammed forced all the people of Arabia to accept it. Individual choice recedes into the background, except (as in Judaism) in the case of proselytes. Its conception of sin and salvation are largely external. It bears a great resemblance to the Judaism of the Hasmonean dynasty, a national cult with a priest-sovereign at its head.

Within Islam there have arisen organizations that imitate the form of a church in certain respects; such were the Morabits (Almoravides) and the Mohads (Almohades),[2050] whose bond of union was in part theological, and such are the great fraternities in Africa and Asia, which are devoted, among other things, to religious work, and have elaborate organizations and ceremonies of reception.[2051] But these are all largely political and military. The Ismalic movement (from ca. 900 A.D. on), the central doctrine of which was the incarnation of God in certain men and finally in the Mahdi, was not Islamic and not Semitic; with a nominal acceptance of the Koran, it was in fact a mixture of Persian and Buddhistic ideas; from it came the Fatimide califate of Egypt, and from this (ca. 1000 A.D.) the Druse sect, which began as a church, but has become merely a local religion.[2052]

1117. It was in Peru that the most thoroughgoing identification of religion with the State was effected.[2053] In the old national religions the individual followed the custom of his country; in Peru the State, in the person of the Inca, determined every person's religious position and duties. If Islam resembles Maccabean Judaism, the Peruvian organization resembled some forms of Medieval Christianity. The Inca was a Pope, only with more power than the Christian Pope, since he acted on every individual. The general ethical standard was good, in spite of some survivals of savagery, but there was a complete negation of individual freedom in religion.[2054]

1118. Modern Hindu sects. The vast multiplication of sects in India is an indication of activity of religious thought;[2055] the movement has been in general toward the formation of voluntary associations, though with many variations and modifications. The reform sects, while they may be considered as developments out of the old systems, Vedic, Civaic, Vishnuic (Krishnaic), have been affected by foreign influence, Mohammedan or Christian. Of the organizations influenced by Islam (followers of Kabir and Dadu) several have produced societies that for a time had the form of a church, with voluntary membership and a plan of salvation; but it has been hard for them to overcome the national tendencies to idolatry and to deification of founder or teacher. The Sikhs, beginning (in the fifteenth century) as a purely religious body, became, by the eighteenth century, a powerful political and military organization. Along with theological reform these sects have been constantly in danger of reverting more or less closely to the old national type, and their church form has been only feebly effective.

1119. The case has been different with the movements induced by contact with Christian forms of belief. The organizations founded or carried on by Rammohun Roy[2056] (early part of the eighteenth century) and later by Chunder Sen,[2057] Mozoomdar, and others are churches in the full sense of the word, and, notwithstanding occasional individual lapses into old Hindu ideas, have so far maintained this character; but they are not wholly native creations, and it remains to be seen what their outcome will be.[2058]

1120. Babism and Bahaism,[2059] the transformation of Babism effected by Bahau'llah, is a church in all essential points, though its organization consists merely in the devotion of its adherents to the teaching and the person of its founder; it has no clergy, no religious ceremonial, no public prayers, no connection with any civil government, but its dogma is well-defined and it offers eternal salvation to its adherents. Its chief source of inspiration is the belief that its founder was an incarnation of God, the Manifestation of God announced by his forerunner, the Bab (the "Gate" to God and truth). That its lack of official ministers and public communal religious services is no bar to its effectiveness is shown by the favor it has met with not only in Persia and other parts of Asia but also in Europe and America. Possibly its success is due in part to its eclectic character and its claim to universality (it seeks to embrace and unite Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity) as well as to the simplicity of its dogma (theism and immortality) and its admirable humanitarian spirit.[2060]

MONACHISM

1121. An effective outgrowth from the church is the monastic system, which is an ecclesia in ecclesia, emphasizing and extending certain features of the parent organization.[2061] It sprang from a dualistic conception, the assumption of a relation of incompatibility or antagonism between God and the world—a feeling whose germ appears in savage life (in taboos and other forms). It has assumed definite shape only in the higher religions and not in all of these—it is foreign to Semitic, Persian, Chinese, and Greek[2062] peoples. Austerity there has been and abstention from certain things but not with the aim of ministering to spiritual life.[2063]

1122. The birthplace of monachism proper was India. In the Brahmanic scheme the highest sanctity and the most brilliant prospects attached to the man who forsook the life of men and devoted himself to solitary meditation in the forest.[2064] The seclusion was individual—the man was an eremite. The organization into communities was made by Buddha[2065] and, apparently contemporaneously, by Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. It is this organization that has made the institution a power in religious history. Buddha's associations were open to all, without distinction of social position or sex. From India monachism passed into all the lands that were occupied by Buddhism.

1123. In Egypt under the Ptolemies there arose a sort of monastic life: after the cult of Sarapis was established men wishing to devote themselves to religious meditation would go to the Sarapeum and shut themselves up in cells.[2066] It is, however, not clear that there was an organization or any sort of communal life in connection with these gatherings. There is no evidence of foreign influence beyond a possible suggestion from the fact that Sarapis was a foreign deity and his cult may have imported foreign ideas into Egypt; but he was completely domiciled in his new abode, was identified by the Greeks with their Zeus and by the Egyptians (by a popular etymology) with their Osir-Apis; there was nothing foreign in his cult, and the claim, sometimes made, for Buddhistic influence (through embassies sent by Asoka to Greek kings) has no definite historical foundation.[2067] Possibly Greek (Pythagorean) influence is to be recognized,[2068] but it cannot be considered strange that a practice of this sort should arise independently in Egypt at a time when a practical monolatry with a good ethical conception of the deity might dispose some men to solitary reflection.

1124. The Egyptian Therapeutae, the "Servants" of God, described by Philo,[2069] resemble these Sarapis monks in certain respects, particularly in their habit of contemplation. Their kernel, however, was Jewish—they had the Jewish Scriptures and observed the seventh day of the week. On this Jewish substratum was imposed Greek thought; they adopted the Alexandrian allegorizing interpretation of the Scriptures, and Philo includes them in that group of persons who found it desirable to withdraw from the common life of men in order to cultivate philosophical and ethical thought. Six days they lived each by himself; on the seventh day they came together for a religious service. Women as well as men were admitted into the association, but the place of general meeting had two divisions, one for men, the other for women. The date of the rise of the sect is uncertain, but it must probably be put in the Ptolemaic period. Their monastic organization must be referred to some current practice, Greek or Egyptian, or to a blending of various lines; the details of their history are too sparse to build on with definiteness.

1125. The similar sect of the Essenes, or Essaei, which was confined to Palestine, is better known.[2070] The Jewish features in their system are: acceptance of the Jewish Scriptures, observance of the Sabbath, recognition of the temple by sending unbloody offerings, regard for ceremonial purity. Non-Jewish features are: rejection of marriage, trade and (according to Philo) animal sacrifice, turning to the sun in prayer (or, according to Josephus, praying to the sun), the teaching that the soul, when set free from the body, passes, if good, to a delightful region across the ocean, and, if bad, to a dark den of ceaseless punishment. Foreign influence in these latter practices and beliefs is obvious, but its precise source is uncertain. There are suggestions of Pythagoreanism and possibly of Zoroastrianism;[2071] it can only be said that various ideas were in the air of Palestine, and that the Essene formulation was effected under conditions and at a time not known to us.[2072] The monastic constitution was clearly of foreign (non-Jewish) origin. Essenism seems not to have affected the Jewish religious ideas of the time. Jesus, though he may have taken from it the prohibition of swearing and possibly one or two other points, was in the main and on all important points (except ethical teaching, which was largely common property) the reverse of what Essenism stood for.

1126. Christian monachism, which appeared first in eremitic form (second century) and later in organized communal form, may have been an independent creation of Christian piety; but it is also possible that it was suggested by the traditions of its birthplace, Egypt;[2073] definite data on this point are lacking. Whatever its origin, it speedily overran the Christian world, in which it has maintained itself up to the present day.[2074]

1127. Monachism has rendered valuable aid to Buddhism and Christianity by training men and women, laity and clergy, who were devoted to the forms of religion represented by these organizations. It has done a higher service by establishing communities that have often been beacon lights, representing, particularly in times of popular ignorance, ideals of conduct. Such communities have often been homes of beneficence and learning. They have, on the other hand, injured religion by severing it from ordinary life. By assuming that the secluded life was holier than that of the world they have tended to put a stigma of unholiness on the latter. Buddhism taught that only the monk could attain the highest sanctity and receive the highest reward, and such has generally been the teaching in those forms of Christianity in which monachism exists. Monasteries and convents, further, have in many cases become rich in this world's goods—a favorite form of devotion has been to build and endow or aid such communities (often with the belief that this atoned for sin); with wealth has come worldlymindedness and corruption of morals. Numerous examples of such decadence occur in Buddhistic and Christian history. There are, however, many examples of holy monastic living. It is true in general of these institutions, as of all others, that when moral supervision of them is exercised by society the possibilities of moral decline are greatly diminished; in an enlightened age they may be assumed to be generally exemplary. Their specifically useful role in the development of religion, as refuges in times of turbulence and centers of charity and thought, belongs to an imperfectly organized form of society; with the growth of enlightenment they tend to disappear.

SACRED BOOKS

1128. All churches and all bodies approaching nearly the church-form have writings that embody their beliefs and are regarded as sacred. Such sacred Scriptures necessarily grow up with the organizations to which they belong, since these latter originate in literary periods and claim divine authorship. Great religious communities naturally produce a large number of such books, and at some time it becomes necessary (from the growth of heresies or rivals) to sift the whole mass and decide which works are to be considered to have permanent divine authority; the process of sifting is performed in each case by its community under the guidance of leading men, and the result is a canon of sacred Scriptures. Such canons are found in Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam, and in minor bodies like the Essenes, Mormons, and others, but not among the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans; Brahmanism occupies a middle ground—it regards the Veda and the accessory books as entitled to great reverence, but has never drawn the line between sacred and nonsacred writings so sharply as has been done in the group named above.

1129. While the general method of fixing the canons has been the same everywhere, the details of the process have differed in different lands. In India the canon of Southern Buddhism (acknowledged formerly in India and now in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam) was settled in a series of councils coming down to the middle of the third century B.C. or later (several centuries after the death of Buddha), the object being to define the faith against heresies; probably the reports of the Master's discourses (he left no writings) were examined, and those declared authentic were brought together, but the date of the final settlement of the canon is not certain, and the sacred books were not reduced to writing till the first century B.C. The canon of Northern Buddhism (accepted in Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan) is less definite and was fixed later.[2075]

1130. The development of the Jewish canon extended over a long period, and its history in outline is well known. While the discourses of the prophets were regarded with respect as giving divine revelations, there is no record of the recognition of an authoritative book before the fifth century B.C., when a sacred law was proclaimed by Nehemiah and Ezra.[2076] Even then there seems to have been no definite collection of writings. The Law was the national religious constitution, and in process of time prophetic books and others came to be regarded with reverence. The translator of Ben-Sira (Ecclesiasticus) into Greek (132 B.C.) mentions three groups of national books (the law, the prophets, and "other writings"), but does not speak of them as divinely inspired. But the intimate contact with the Greek world, and especially the Maccabean struggle, deepened the Palestinian Jewish reverence for the national literature. A process of sifting and defining, at first unofficial, began, and this work naturally passed, with the growth of legal learning, into the hands of leading doctors of law. Early in the first century of our era public opinion in Palestine had taken shape; the standard established was a local national one—books illustrating the national history and teachings, and written in Hebrew, were accepted (so, for example, the book of Esther, which is nonreligious but national), others (as the Wisdom of Solomon) were rejected. For various reasons certain books (Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) remained doubtful. After the destruction of Jerusalem the increasing literary feeling, the establishment of rabbinical schools, and the necessity of defining the Jewish position against growing Christianity and other heresies led to definite action[2077]—in the Synod of Jamnia (about 100 A.D.) the Palestinian canon, after hot debates, was finally settled in the form in which the Hebrew Old Testament now appears. Alexandrian Judaism had a different standard and accepted, in addition to the Palestinian collection, a group of books (the Apocrypha) that the Palestinians rejected. Certain other books (as the various Enoch apocalypses) were not accepted by either Jewish body, though they were highly esteemed. Both canons were slow growths of national feeling—books were chosen that accorded with prevailing ideas; but it is now impossible to recover all the critical views that determined the results.[2078]

1131. Young Christianity, at first a Jewish body, naturally adopted the Jewish canons, but in the course of a century produced a considerable normative literature of its own. The Christian canon was settled much in the same way as the Jewish. There was doubt about certain books, there were differences of opinion in different quarters, the growth of heresies called for the establishment of a definite standard, and a final decision was reached in the West and announced toward the end of the fifth century by Pope Gelasius; in the East the action was less definite, but the conclusion was about the same. The books of the Alexandrian canon that were rejected by the Palestinians were largely used by early Christian writers, by whom some of them are constantly cited as sacred Scripture, for they were found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), which was the Old Testament text used by Christians. So great was their popularity that Jerome was led, against his judgment, to include them in his translation (the Latin Vulgate), and by the Council of Trent (1546) they were indorsed as deuterocanonical, and are still so regarded in the Roman Church. In the Greek Church they were accepted as canonical in the beginning and up to the early part of the nineteenth century, but are now, it would seem, looked on only as useful for the instruction of catechumens.[2079] By Protestants their canonical authority is generally denied, though up to the early part of the nineteenth century they were commonly printed in editions of the Bible; the Articles of the Church of England characterize them as instructive but not of authority for doctrine, and lessons from them now appear in the Lectionary of the Church.[2080]

1132. The history of the collection of the Zoroastrian sacred books is involved in obscurity. A late tradition was that many such writings were destroyed by Alexander. This points to a belief that the existing writings were later than the fall of the old Persian empire. When a beginning was made of committing Zoroastrian material to writing is uncertain. In the first century of our era Pliny had heard of verses ascribed to Zoroaster,[2081] and, as Mazdean books were in existence at the rise of the Sassanian dynasty, the probability seems to be that the reduction to writing had then been going on for a considerable time—how long it is impossible to say. The material grew with the development of the people and was ascribed to Zoroaster[2082] (as the Jews ascribed their legal material to Moses). An official collection of sacred writings was made in the fourth century of our era—the exact extent of this collection and the principle that governed its formation are not clear. It may be surmised that the appearance of strange teachings, such as that of Mani, and the spread of Christianity eastward, forced on the leaders the task of defining the orthodox faith.[2083] In making their collection they would naturally take only such writings as were in accord with the spirit of the religion of their time. Thus they established (in the fourth century) a body of sacred writings; it does not follow that no additions were later made to the canon—how far it is represented in the present Avesta it may be difficult to say.

1133. The history of the Islamic canon is simple. The Koran enjoys the distinction of being the only sacred canon produced by one man. There never was any question of its sacredness, and there has been hardly any question of its content. Mohammed's discourses were taken down by his followers in his lifetime, were put into shape just after his death, the collection was revised a few years later (under the Calif Othman), has since been universally accepted in the Moslem world as the authoritative divinely given standard of religious truth, and there is no reason to doubt that it contains substantially all the teaching of the Prophet and only his teaching. The scribe Zayd, who acted as editor, may have altered or inserted a word here and there, but he would not have dared to change the thought. The traditions of extra-Koranic sayings ascribed to Mohammed (the hadith), so far as they may be supposed to be genuine utterances of his (most of them are spurious), do not add anything to his doctrine.[2084]

1134. As to the influence of sacred books on religion, it is obvious, in the first place, that they are always formulations of the ideas of the places and times in which they originate, and that they vary in tone and in importance accordingly. It is true, however, that the canonical collections of the great religions, having arisen in enlightened circles, all have, along with local (social, mythological, eschatological) features, generally high ethical and spiritually religious standards. For this reason they have always been, as religious and ethical guides and sources of inspiration, important factors in the development of civilization as well as in the life of the churches. Their teachings, generally representing the ideas of gifted men formulated under the pressure of great religious enthusiasm, have perpetuated high standards, holding them up in times of decadence and corruption and clouded moral vision.

1135. A specially noteworthy point in their influence is their role of household monitors and comforters. As religious manuals, invested with divine authority, they have found their way into families and other small and intimate circles, have been children's textbooks and parents' guides, and thus have entered in an extraordinary way into individual life. They have reached wider circles through expositions and discourses held in connection with stated religious services. They have been used as textbooks in schools, and in general have been the most widely read books in the world. They have thus been unifying forces, each in its special community.

Their influence, further, has not been confined to purely religious life. Being regarded as containing the final truth, they have been objects of study and occasions of the development of learning. The necessity of explaining their use of words and grammatical constructions, their historical and geographical statements and views, their pictures and theories of social life, their psychology and philosophy, their theistic and eschatological ideas, have led to investigations of all these subjects. Early Moslem science sprang from the study of the Koran, and the later Moslem discussions of free-will, immortality and other points were called forth by Koranic statements. The philosophical writings of Maimonides, produced under Greek influence (through Moslem translations of Aristotle), were directed to the elucidation of Old Testament ideas. The contributions of modern Christians, Jews, Moslems, and Parsis to knowledge, sacred books being the occasions, are numerous and important.

1136. Along with these beneficent influences there have been others less praiseworthy. As any sacred book belongs to a particular age, it inevitably, in the course of time, falls into disaccord with later ideas on certain points. When this happens there are always some persons who, failing to discriminate between the local and transitory and the permanent, unjustly reject the book in toto; others, making a distinction, take it as a literary product, accept what they think valuable, and treat the rest as an imperfect product of the past. Those who accept the book as divinely inspired and therefore, as they think, infallible either maintain literally all its statements (cosmological, historical, eschatological, and other) or else undertake to interpret certain of them in accordance with current views. When such interpretation is forced, it becomes intellectually and morally an evil—it accustoms the religious public to logical distortions, and it nourishes a disingenuousness that easily becomes immoral. The belief that a sacred book is final authority often results in limitation of freedom of thought—certain things are excluded from discussion. The instinctive demand for freedom asserts itself, however, in various ways: sometimes, as described above, a desired sense is obtained by violence; sometimes a religious body that is regarded by its adherents as authoritative interpreter changes its decision, in accord with the spirit of a new age, and grants liberty where it had previously refused it The treatment of sacred books follows the phases of general culture.

The dogmatic statements of these books are condensed into creeds, which become organic law.[2085] They express each the interpretation put by a given church on the words of its sacred Scriptures. The interpretations are the outcome of historical processes, the final result of which is a formulation of the ideas of its time; where the same sacred book is accepted by several churches, there may be several different creeds based on the one book—that is, churches and creeds alike are subject to the variations of human opinion that result from differences of temperament, social surroundings, and general culture. Creeds are convenient and effective manuals. They may be made to change their meaning by processes of interpretation; elasticity in a creed is favorable to permanence—it is thereby able to adapt itself to changing conditions—and the degree of elasticity depends largely on the persons who are its authorized expounders, that is, on the area of public opinion that these persons represent.

1137. General influence of churches. All organized religion has been a potent factor in human life. In savage and half-civilized communities it enters into every detail of life, since, in the absence of knowledge of natural law, everything that happens is ascribed to supernatural agency. In the old national cults, in which other departments of thought (art, commerce, science, philosophy) became prominent, religion was somewhat isolated—it received a particular representation in sacrifices, festivals, and other observances; but such ceremonies were so numerous, and so many ancient customs survived, that it still played a conspicuous part in daily life.[2086] In the period in which churches arose there was a still greater specialization of the activities of life, and this specialization has become more pronounced in modern times, in which from various causes the tendency is to mass religious observances in certain days and seasons and leave the rest of the time free. This apparent banishment of religion from everyday affairs does not, however, signify diminution of interest in religion itself—partly it is an economic arrangement, the assignment of a definite time to every particular duty, but mainly it is the result of a better conception of what religion means, the feeling that, being an inward experience, it is less dependent on external occasions.

1138. Churches, as is remarked above, differ from the old national religions mainly in the emphasis they lay on individualism and on the idea of redemption. They represent a profounder conception of the ethical relation between man and God, or, as in Buddhism, between man and the ideal of perfection in the universe. They foster religion by holding public services and by the production of devotional works; they advance learning by supplying men of leisure; socially they are in general a conservative force, with the good and bad effects of conservatism. But their special function is to treat man as a spiritual being having immediate personal relations with the deity. Charitable and educational work (ethical and other) and social gatherings they share with other organizations, and they are incompetent in themselves to deal with economic and other scientific questions. That wherein they stand apart from other organizations is the emotional element they introduce into man's attitude toward the universe. According to this point of view man regards himself not merely as a part of the world but as bound to its author by ties of gratitude and affection. This sentiment may be independent of all scientific theories, may be shared by the learned and the unlearned; it is thus a great unifying force, and gives to life the glow of enthusiasm with the repose of trust.

1139. The temptations to which churches are exposed are those that are touched on above, and they may be briefly summed up here. There is the tendency to an excessive elaboration of the externals of religion, ritual, and dogma. Something of these is doubtless necessary in churches as in all human organizations, but they may easily be carried so far as to obscure the essential things. The history of all churches exhibits this tendency. There are protests from time to time, revolts against formalities and speculations, and then frequently in the new organizations the old movement is resumed. For our own times a distinction may perhaps be made: while there seems to be a steady general increase of ritual, there is in many quarters a disposition to minimize or curtail dogma.

1140. However this may be, a more important tendency in churches is toward the claim to absolute authority in religious matters. This tendency is universal in bodies that hold to the infallibility of certain sacred books. It is obvious that absolute authority in an organized body and individual freedom are mutually incompatible,[2087] and that all that makes for freedom makes against the church influence in this direction. Finally, when churches enter into administrative alliance with the civil authorities, or assume civil and political power, they to that extent abdicate their spiritual rights and abandon their true function.

UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS

1141. So far only particular religions, belonging to particular peoples or regions, have been considered. In recent years the question has been much discussed whether any of these may be called universal. A universal religion may be defined either as one that has been accepted by all peoples, or as one whose doctrines are such that it may be so accepted. The term is frequently used loosely to describe a religion that has passed definitely beyond its birthplace and has been adopted by different nations or districts. Obviously, if we take the stricter definition, the question at issue can be decided only by an appeal to facts. Whether or not a given religion has actually been universally accepted can be determined from statistics, and the question whether it is fitted to be generally adopted must be answered by a similar appeal. It may be held, and is held, of various religions that their standards are so high and their schemes of worship and conceptions of salvation so obviously suited to human nature that they cannot fail to be adopted when they are known; but such are the diversities of human thought that this consideration cannot be regarded as decisive—a religious system that seems to one set of men to be perfect may appear to others to be unsatisfactory,[2088] and it is only by trial that it can be determined how far it is capable of conquering new territory. The test of actual diffusion, then, must be applied to those religions for which the claim to universality has been made—these are Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam.[2089]

1142. Buddhism has had a history full of vicissitudes.[2090] Beginning in Northern India as an Aryan faith, in the course of a few centuries it overran a great part of the peninsula, then began to decline, gradually lost its hold on the people, partly, it is said, by reason of the corruption of its morals, chiefly, doubtless, because it was not suited to the character of the Hindu people, and finally, in the twelfth century of our era, left its native land, to which it has never returned. Meantime it had established itself firmly in Ceylon and later in Burma and Siam and had been carried to China (not long after the beginning of our era), whence it passed to Korea, Central Asia, Japan, and adjacent islands, and as early as the sixth century gained a footing in Tibet. It has maintained its conquests outside of India to the present day, except that it has been driven out of a considerable part of Central Asia by Mohammedanism; in China and Japan it exists alongside of the native cults, its relations with which are friendly. It presents the curious spectacle of a religion, originally Hindu Aryan, that now finds a home exclusively (with one exception, Ceylon) among non-Aryan peoples; but among these peoples it has generally been degraded by the infusion of low native elements, and has discarded its original essence. By reason of its negative attitude toward life it has found no favor as a system with Western Indo-Europeans, Persians, and Semites, except that it gave a coloring to certain Persian sects (the Ismailic) and has perhaps influenced Bahaism.[2091] As far as present appearances go there is no probability of its gaining general acceptance.

1143. Judaism is too much encumbered with peculiar national usages to commend itself to non-Jews. There was a time just before and just after the beginning of our era when a considerable number of persons resorted to it for escape from the confusion of current religious systems, and since that time there have been conversions here and there; but these have been too few to affect the general character of religion in any community. Even to Reform Judaism, which has discarded Talmudic usages and does not differ doctrinally from certain forms of Christianity, there clings a racial tone that tends to isolate it, and it does not seem that this isolation is likely to cease soon.

1144. Christianity, beginning as a Jewish movement, speedily became Graeco-Roman, and in this form took possession of the whole of Western Asia (except Jewish districts and parts of Arabia), Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the northern coast of Africa, and was adopted, under Byzantine and Roman influence, by the Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic tribes. Most of its Asiatic and all of its African territory except Abessinia was taken from it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, but small bodies of Christians remained in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. With this exception it has since been the religion only of the Western Indo-Europeans and of a few half-civilized peoples who have been Christianized either by missionaries (the Karens of Burma, a part of the Telugus of Southeastern India and others) or by contact with Westerners (Philippine Islands, tribes of North America and South America) or by both these agencies (the Hawaiian Islands). Local peculiarities have been largely banished from its usages but not from its dogma. It is, apparently, its dogma (in the orthodox form) that has prevented its acceptance by most Semites, by the peoples of Central and Eastern Asia, and by many undeveloped tribes of Africa and Oceania.

1145. Zoroastrianism has never advanced to any important extent beyond the boundaries of its native land. It has never recovered from the crushing blow dealt it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, and is now professed by hardly more than 100,000 persons (mostly in Bombay).

1146. Islam is now the religion of the Turkish empire (except the Christian groups in Europe, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia), Persia, Egypt (except the Copts), and the North African coast, and has a large following in Central Asia, China, India, the Malay peninsula, the Malay Archipelago, the Sudan, and a considerable representation on the east and west coasts of Africa. Its spread, as is remarked above, has been effected sometimes by force, but oftener by social pressure and through traders and missionaries. Decadent Christianity in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt readily yielded to it; Persian Zoroastrianism made some effort to maintain itself but succumbed to the combination of military pressure and the prospect of civil advancement and peace; after the fall of Constantinople conversions of Christians in Europe were numerous, and the Moslem conquests in India were followed by a considerable accession of Hindus to the Islamic faith. At the present time it appears to be advancing only among the half-civilized tribes of Central Africa, but it maintains its position against Buddhism and Christianity.[2092]

1147. There is, thus, now no religion that, so far as extent of diffusion is concerned, can be called universal. Omitting the Jewish and Parsi groups, the Brahmanic and other religions of India, and the Chinese Confucian cult, three great religions have divided the world among them, Buddhism taking Eastern Asia, Islam Western Asia and Northern Africa, and Christianity Europe and America. It is sometimes suggested that the religion of the leaders of civilization, the Christian nations, must become the faith of the world. But, even if we may look forward to a time when social fusion, under the control of the present Christian nations, shall have brought about substantial unity of religious thought in the world, it is impossible now to predict what the nature of that thought will be, since Christianity has undergone and is now undergoing change, and may in the far future assume a different form from that of to-day; fundamentals may remain, but opinions differ even now as to what are fundamentals.

1148. Classification of religions. A word may be added on proposed classifications of religions.[2093] Certain resemblances and differences between religions are obvious, and groups may be made, geographical, ritualistic, theologic, or soteriological, but it is difficult to find a principle of classification that shall bring out the essential characteristic or characteristics of every religion and yet distinctly mark every one off from all others. All have much in common, and the elements in all are so mixed that divisions necessarily cross one another. Every religion is the product of some one community and represents its peculiar view of human life in its relation to the supernatural; there may be borrowings and fusions, but the final outcome is shaped by the thought of the people to whom the religion specifically belongs.[2094] The differences between various religions are the differences of thought between the communities involved, and the differences and the resemblances are often curious and sometimes defy explanation.

1149. Leaving aside ritual, which, so far as it is a merely external form of approach to the deity, does not touch the essence of religion, the following points may be said to be common to all religions: (1) The sense of a supernatural control of life, and the conviction that the supernatural Power must be placated or obeyed.[2095] (2) The belief that religion deals with and controls the whole of life; this belief is pronounced among savages, who know nothing of natural law, and is regarded as essential in more advanced communities, in which, from the religious point of view, law, physical or mental, is taken to be an expression of the will of the deity. (3) The creation of divine personalities[2096] (representing popular ideals), and movements toward a unitary view of the divine control of the world. (4) An ethical element in the conception of the character of the supernatural Power and the modes of pleasing this Power. The ethical side of religion corresponds to the general ethical standard of the people—in savages it is low, but it exists. (5) The conception of salvation as the goal of religious faith and service; the salvation looked for is at first physical, is gradually moralized, and ultimately takes the form of spiritual union with the deity. These are the essential elements of religion; they all exist in crude form in the lowest strata of society, and are purified in the course of social growth.

1150. A classification naturally suggested by this enumeration of fundamentals would be one based on grades of general culture, savage, half-civilized, and civilized; but such a classification would not take account of the differences of character in the members of the higher grades. These differ from one another in the conception of the ultimate Power of the world and of the nature of salvation and the mode of attaining it, and in other less important points. They are so highly composite in structure that their interrelations are complicated, and those that are brought together by one critical canon may be separated by another. Buddhism is allied on one side (the ignoring of deity) to Confucianism and Epicureanism, on another side (the hope of moral salvation) to Christianity. Zoroastrianism touches the Veda in its theistic construction, and is remarkably like Judaism in its organization. Christianity is Jewish on one side and Graeco-Roman on another. Islam has Christian and Jewish conceptions attached to the old-Semitic view of life.

1151. A distinction of importance is that between national religions and those founded each by a single man (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).[2097] This distinction may be pressed too far—all religions have great men who have given new directions to thought, and no religion can be said to be wholly the creation of an individual man, since all, as is pointed out above, are outcomes of the ideas of communities.[2098] The distinction in question is not a satisfactory basis for a general classification since it fails to note the theological differences between the various religions. Nevertheless, it embodies a significant fact: in the course of the history of the world the three religions above-named have come to divide the civilized world among them, that is, they have been selected as best responding to the religious needs of men. No one of them is universal, but the three together practically include the civilized world.[2099] They are modified in various ways by their adherents, but they have not been superseded. They have grown beyond the ideas of their founders, but these latter nevertheless occupy a unique position. Moses and Zoroaster are dim figures whose work it is impossible to define, but the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, though they left no writings, are known with substantial accuracy, and Mohammed has expressed himself in a book. The persons of the three founders are the objects of a devotion not given to other leaders. These things justify us in putting Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism in a class by themselves, of which the distinguishing note is the discarding of local national ideas and usages. These last are not wholly given up, but they are less prominent than in Judaism and Zoroastrianism. It is to the insight of the individual founders that this relative freedom from local features is due. This characteristic does not necessarily carry with it superiority in ethical and general religious conceptions.

A different line of cleavage is indicated by the designation "religions of redemption." In one sense all religions come under this head,[2100] for all have for their object the freeing man from the ills of life. In a higher sense the term 'redemption' means deliverance from the power of sin and from its punishment, particularly in the world to come. This meaning appears in definite form in Buddhism and Christianity, and somewhat less distinctly in Mithraism and the later Judaism; in the Old Testament religion and Islam it is not clearly stated. As it appears in germinal form in the lower cults, its development may be traced up to its culmination in the systems in which man is freed from moral taint through the agency of an individual savior or in accordance with a cosmic ethical law.

1152. Unity exists among the lowest and among the highest religious systems. Among savage and half-civilized cults there are no important differences—they all have the same ideas respecting the nature and functions of supernatural Powers and the ways of approaching them.[2101] In the higher cults a process of differentiation goes on for a certain time while each is developing its special characteristics, and then a counter-movement sets in—they all tend to come together by suppressing local features and emphasizing general ideas.[2102] Thus at the present day there are groups of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Moslems that, without abandoning their several faiths, find themselves in substantial accord on some essential points. The unity of savages is the uniformity of undeveloped thought; the later unity rests on discrimination between fundamentals and accessories.

1153. Tabulated classifications of religions, it would seem, must be arbitrary and misleading—they give undue prominence to some one religious fact, they maim the individuality of cults, and they obscure the relations between certain cults by putting these into different divisions. The true relations between the various religious systems may be brought out by comparisons. In this way individuality and unitary character may be preserved in every case, while the agreements and disagreements may be made clear by referring them to general principles of religious development.



CHAPTER XI

SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL ELEMENTS IN RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS

1154. It is remarked above[2103] that the sphere of religion is wholly distinct from that of science (including philosophy and art) and from that of constructive ethics (the determination of rules of conduct), while it is true that the three, being coexistent and original departments of human nature, must influence one another, and must tend to coalesce and be fused into a unitary conception of life. This process goes on in different degrees in different times and places, sometimes one department of thought getting the upper hand and sometimes another, but we cannot suppose that it ever ceases entirely. The relation between religion and its two companions may become clear from a brief survey of the facts given by historical records, this term being used to include all trustworthy sources of information.

THE SCIENTIFIC ELEMENT

1155. Man is bound by his constitution to inquire into the nature of things, to seek for the facts of the world, including the human soul. This search is made by both religion and science, but their procedures are somewhat different. Religion demands only the fact of an ultimate moral ground of the world; science observes all phenomena and endeavors to connect and organize them by a thread of natural causation or invariable sequence; religion looks behind phenomena to what it regards as its source. This source is reached by some process of reasoning, either by acceptance, on grounds held to be satisfactory, of a divine revelation, or by inference from the facts of the world (as the presence of design or of moral order); but, when it is reached, all other facts of science are treated as irrelevant. If, then, science confines itself to the observation of sequences, the relation between the two cannot be one of permanent hostility, since their material is not the same. They clash when an old nonreligious belief, adopted by religion, is confronted by an antagonistic scientific discovery; the first result is a protest, but the mind demands harmony, and religion always ends by accepting a well-attested scientific conclusion,[2104] and bringing it into harmony with its fundamental beliefs.

1156. Certain phases in the relations between religion and science may be distinguished, but an earlier or cruder phase may continue to exist alongside of a later and higher one. There is first the time when science based on a recognition of natural laws does not exist. The existing science is then one of imagination, the fanciful application of crude observations to the explanation of all phenomena. The verae causae are supernatural agencies—science and religion are one. Explanations of phenomena take the form of what we call myths, what the people of the time regard as true histories. There is no place for the conception of miracle; the supernatural agents are all-powerful, one thing is no harder than another, nothing is strange or inexplicable. There is a crude conception of the unity of God and the world.

1157. The period of the rise and decline of the great national religions and the rise of monotheistic cults (along with which may be included Confucianism and Buddhism) is characterized by a great development of philosophy (in China, India, and Greece) and a beginning of scientific research properly so called (especially in astronomy, physics, medicine, and chemistry, in Greece and by the Moslems of Persia). There is a revolt against the older conception of unity. Deities are highly personalized, stand outside of the world, and intervene in human affairs at crises. It is the age of miracles—supernatural Powers, by reason of their intimate social relations with their respective communities, are expected to come to their aid in all important matters, and, for most persons, there is no difficulty in holding that they are able to change the course of nature, which is not regarded as being absolutely fixed. In certain philosophical circles, however, this view is rejected, and nature, with its laws, is conceived of as a separate and independent existence, accompanied or not by gods. Science begins to define the nature of deities, and to limit the sphere of their practical activities—this is a precursor of the fall of the old divinities. The old myths are retained, but they are purified, humanized, and allegorized, and in some cases applied, to new persons and events, according to changes in religious construction.

1158. The next phase is the recognition by science of the absolute domination of natural law in the world of phenomena. Religion, when it accepts this view, holds fast to the belief in the ultimate personal moral Force, and conceives of this Force as working and expressing and manifesting itself only in phenomena in accordance with natural law—that is, this law is regarded as the expression of the divine will. Science is thus given liberty to investigate phenomena to the fullest extent, and religion is freed from the incumbrance of physical, psychological, and metaphysical theories; the spheres of the two are sharply defined and kept separate. Such a conception is held to differ from "naturalism" or "materialism" in that it recognizes a Power distinct from matter—to differ from what has been called "humanism" (which makes man the sole power in the world), or from positivism (which regards man as the only worthy object of worship), in that it ascribes to the will and activity of divine spirit the high position of humanity as the center and explanation of the life of the world—to differ from pantheism in that for it God is a personal being who enters into relations with a free humanity—and to differ from agnosticism in that it holds that God may be known from his works.

1159. Whatever difficulties may attach to this conception are regarded by its adherents as not insuperable. In all religious systems except Buddhism and Positivism the personality of the ultimate ground of the world is looked on as a necessary datum. In the view under consideration it is held that God exists for the world in which he expresses himself, as the world exists for him, its source and end. The world, with all its parts and incidents, is conceived of as a sacred thing, consecrated to God, and ever striving to realize him in itself, and itself in him. Under the guidance of exacter scientific thought the old crude idea of the unity of the divine and the world is thus transformed into the idea of a unity of will and work. In this conception there is no place for myths, and no need is felt for miracles: histories of the external world and of human society are held to rest on observation of facts, and generally the possibility of miracles is not denied, but they are regarded as unnecessary and improbable—they are thought unnecessary because the conception of the divine character and the religious life are not supposed to be dependent on them, and they are thought improbable because they are held to be not supported by experience. This is the attitude of those persons who accept the conclusions of science; there is, however, great difference of opinion in the religious world on this point.[2105]

1160. Certain scientific and philosophical positions discard religion as a department of human life. When it is held that man knows nothing and can know nothing but phenomena, or when, if something is assumed behind phenomena, it is regarded as too vague to enter into personal relations with men, religion as a force in life becomes impossible. In these cases the two conceptions must stand side by side as enemies till one or the other is proved, to the satisfaction of men, to be untenable. Meanwhile it appears that one result of scientific investigations has been to delimitate religion by making it clear that, while it belongs as an influence to all life, it cannot include scientific theories as a part of its content—a result that cannot be otherwise than favorable to its development.

THE ETHICAL ELEMENT

1161. Conduct has always been associated with religion. Supernatural Powers have been regarded as members of the tribe or other society, divine headmen part of whose function it is to see that the existing customs are observed, these customs being ethical as well as ritual. Even in such low tribes as the Fuegians and the Australians the anger of some Power is supposed to follow violation of law. Instructions to initiates often include moral relations.[2106] The connection of morals with religion in the more advanced peoples is close. In this regard a distinction is to be made between the creation and the adoption and treatment of ethical ideals.

1162. Ethical codes are never created by religion but are always adopted by it from current usages and ideas.[2107] Rules respecting the protection of life, property, and the family are found everywhere—they arise out of natural social relations, even the simplest, and grow in definiteness and refinement with the advance of society, so that things at one period lawful, and accepted by religious authorities, are at a later period prohibited.[2108] Kindness to one's fellows is common in the lowest tribes, and in higher civilizations is formulated as a golden rule (Confucius, Book of Tobit, New Testament, and virtually the Egyptian Ptahhotep, the Old Testament Book of Proverbs, Buddha). Truthfulness, fidelity, and justice have been generally recognized as things to be approved—roughly defined and aimed at in rude communities, more exactly defined and more clearly held up as ideals in higher communities. All these virtues are taken up more or less definitely into religious codes.

1163. Less praiseworthy customs and ideas also have been indorsed by religious law. Where sexual license prevails it is made a feature in religious ritual and other ceremonies after it has become a part of social usage and law. It is true that it is generally at first naive, and, being not illegal, is not a violation of rights and not immoral in the sense in which a refined age regards it.[2109] But it tends, even among savages, to become socially bad, and, when it survives into times of higher standards, is a corrupting influence. In this bad form it was sanctioned by religious authorities in Canaan (even at one time among the Hebrews),[2110] Greece, and Syria, and exists to-day in India as an accompaniment of religious worship. The records of religious cruelty are familiar. Wholesale slaughter, persecution, torture have been abundantly practiced in the name of religion.[2111] Many social institutions (such as slavery and polygamy) countenanced by a given age have been adopted in the religious codes of the age. These examples illustrate the fact that religion does not undertake to fix the details of ethical conduct—its role is something different. This statement applies to the institution of taboo, as is remarked above[2112]—its ritual rules are not moral, and its moral rules are adopted from social usage. It was influential in the organization of society, but not in the way of adding anything to the moral code. In modern economic and other social questions that have an ethical side the details are left to science; religion contents itself with insisting on moral principles as having divine authority, and these principles, as moral, are already recognized by society.

1164. Discrepancy between codes and conduct has always existed—few religious persons live up to the standards that they regard as authoritative. This failure concerns not the sincerity of the religious society in setting up its standard, but the conditions regulating actual conduct.

A natural consequence of the coexistence of religion and ethics in human life has been that each has influenced the other. Advance in the purity and clearness of social ethical ideals has had the effect of modifying not only religious codes but also religious dogmas. The old belief (founded on the conception of social solidarity) that a family, tribe, or nation was punished by the deity for the sin of one of its members vanished before the recognition of individual responsibility. The doctrines of eternal punishment and vicarious expiatory suffering are now rejected by some religious bodies and circles as unjust. When they are maintained, it is on the ground that they are not unjust—the appeal is to an ethical principle. Apart from the fact of maintenance or rejection, the tendency is to try all doctrines by moral standards. If they are rejected and yet stand, or seem to stand, in sacred books, then either the statements of the books are interpreted in accordance with the moral standards, or the ethical authority of the books is set aside.

1165. The influence of religion on ethics has been in the way not of modifying codes but of enforcing existing ideas and customs and giving an impulse to moral life. It has commonly furnished supernatural sanctions—rewards and punishments in this life or in the other. How far this conception has been effective in restraining men from actual ill-doing, in furthering good conduct, and in developing inward loyalty to the right, may be a question. To answer this question would require such a collection of facts as has never been made and perhaps cannot be made. We can see that the belief in divine rewards and punishments has sometimes been a real power, sometimes seems to have no effect. The character of the sanctions varies with the growth of refinement, advancing from the crude savage and later ideas of physical pains and pleasures to the conception of moral degradation or salvation. The recognition of rewards and punishments for one's self as incentives to good living is not regarded as immoral if they are not made the chief motive—the prevailing view is that it is legitimate to look for results of action, that, however, devotion to right must always be independent of results that affect only the actor. Whatever the general effect of belief in supernatural sanctions, it must be concluded that the existence of morality in the world is not dependent on this belief. The common social motives for practicing justice and kindness are so strong and so persistent that these virtues must always retain a certain supremacy apart from men's religious creeds. The term 'supernatural' is used above in the more usual sense of 'opposed to natural,' but, according to one religious point of view, all things are the direct work of God, so that there is no difference between 'natural' and 'supernatural,' and the real sanctions of morality are all the conditions of life, external and internal.[2113]

1166. The most important elements that religion (though only in its highest form) has introduced into ethics are a grandiose conception of the basis and nature of the moral life, and a tone of tenderness in the attitude toward the deity and toward men. The moral code it regards as the will of God, conscience as the voice of God, morality as obedience to God, all activity as a coworking with God. Nobility is given to the good life by making it a part of the eternal divine purpose of the world. The conception of human life as an essential factor in the constitution and history of the world is common to religion and philosophy, but religion adds the warmth of personal relation with the divine head of the world. Into the philosophical and ethical view of the unity of humanity religion infuses reverence and affection for the individual as being not merely one of the component parts of the mass but a creature of God, the object of his loving care, capable of redemption and union with God. Here again, while there is no addition to the content of the ethical code, there is added intensity of feeling, which may be a spur to action.

1167. In the sphere of religion, as in all spheres of human activity, ideas and tendencies are embodied in human personalities by whom they are defined, illustrated, and enforced—not only in founders of religious systems and other great leaders of thought, but in lesser everyday persons who commend religion, each to his limited circle, by purity of life. The special ethical figures contributed to history by religion are those of the martyr and the saint. The martyr is one who bears witness passively to what he regards as truth at the cost of his life; he thus differs from the hero, who is a man of action. The martyr spirit is found elsewhere than in religious history, but it is in this latter that it has played its special ethical role—divergencies from established faiths always excite peculiarly sharp hostility. When it is pure loyalty to convictions of truth, it is an ethical force of great moment—a permanent inspiration.[2114] It is less valuable when it springs from the hope of personal advantage, when a controlling consideration is the belief that one goes directly from the stake (as Moslem warriors believed they went from death in battle) to celestial happiness. There arose at times (for example, in the Decian and Diocletian persecutions of the third century, and in Cordova in the ninth century, when there was no persecution) a fanatical desire for the honors of martyrdom that had to be checked by the Church leaders.

1168. The saint is related to the virtuous man as holiness to virtue. The difference between them is one not of ethical practice but of motive and sentiment—holiness is virtue consecrated to the deity. The saint, like the martyr, is often an ethical power. When the title is given officially as an ecclesiastical honor, it may or may not carry with it moral excellence. In Brahmanism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam saintship has sometimes been contaminated with physical and ritual ideas and practices, and so far ceases to have ethical value.[2115]

1169. The evil influence of the religious point of view on ethical life has been of the general nature already referred to:[2116] embalming and sanctifying outgrown and injurious social institutions; substituting form for spirit; encouraging asceticism; drawing sharp lines of demarcation between men on the basis of religious opinions, and so far creating an antisocial spirit.

1170. The development of the sense of obligation to do right (conscience) is due to so many different influences that it is hard to say exactly what part any one of these has taken in the process. But obviously religion has been an important factor in the result so far reached. By its distinct connection of the favor of the deity with conduct it has tended to fix attention on the latter and to strengthen the feeling that righteousness is the sovereign thing. Though such regard for right-doing is at first mainly egoistic, it easily becomes an ideal, reverenced for its own sake, and more powerful because it is identified with a person and colored by the sentiments of gratitude and love that religion calls forth. Religion, especially in the earlier forms of society, though not only in them, has been a pedagogue to lead men to the acknowledgment of the supremacy of the moral law. It differs from other such guides in the tone of mingled humility and enthusiasm that it gives to this fealty.

1171. As to the existence of moral evil in the world, religion can only regard it as the work of supernatural Powers. In the savage period the question does not come up—moral evil is taken as a part of the nature of things and is not curiously inquired into. In later times it is ascribed to some malevolent spirit or deity who is either independent of the supreme deity (as in certain half-civilized tribes) or is tolerated by him (Angro Mainyu, Satan), or to a subordinate employed by him (lies put into the mouths of prophets by a deity),[2117] or to a quite separate divine Power, not necessarily malevolent (as in some philosophical theories). Religion may adopt some philosophical explanation—as that evil is only failure to reach the good, or only the lower step to which we look back from a greater height, or an inevitable accompaniment of a scheme of life characterized by struggle and intended to recognize the freedom of the will and to develop moral autonomy—but, from its own resources it can only say that it is a thing inexplicable by man, belonging to a divine plan that the devout soul accepts as right because God has ordained it.

1172. The theory of man's native incapacity to do right (total depravity), held by some religious bodies, is antimoral since it denies human freedom. The attempt to modify it by the supposition of divine impartation of moral power is inadequate unless such power is held to be given to every person, and this amounts to an indirect affirmation of freedom and denial of moral impotency. The theory is, however, practically innocuous, being rejected or ignored by the universal consciousness of freedom.

1173. To the questions, raised by philosophy, whether the world is essentially good or bad and whether life is worth living, theistic religion gives a simple answer: a perfect God implies a perfect universe; this answer is germinal and confused in early religion, and is definitely stated only in the higher systems. The great theistic sacred books, Jewish, Christian, Mazdean, and Moslem, all teach that though there are present limitations and sufferings, there is to be a happy issue for the faithful out of all distresses, and the Buddhistic view, though nontheistic, is essentially the same as this; as for other persons, they are sometimes included in a final restoration, when moral evil is to disappear, sometimes are excluded from the happy outcome, but in both cases the scheme of the world is regarded as good. Leaving out of view the question as to the exact interpretation of the facts of life, this optimism is ethically useful as giving cheerfulness and enthusiasm to moral life, with power of enduring ills through the conviction of the ultimate triumph of the right. It may pass into a stolid dogmatic ignoring or denial of the existence of evil, and then tends to become inhuman and therefore ethically bad.[2118] It is, however, commonly saved from such an unfortunate result by common sense and the instinct of sympathy. And it is so general a conception and its goal is so remote that it cannot be a strong and permanent moral force for most persons—immediate experiences are as a rule more powerful than remote expectations. But, so far as it is a living faith, religious optimism is in the main a healthy ethical factor in life.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] That is, phenomena regarded as special acts of a superhuman Power; in the larger conception of religion all phenomena are at once natural and divine acts.

[2] In early religion they are usually ghosts, beasts, plants, or inanimate objects; rarely living men. Cf. Marett's remarks on pre-animistic religion in his Threshold of Religion.

[3] Appeal to the Powers carries with it a certain sense of oneness with them, in which we may reasonably recognise the germ of the idea of union with God, which is the highest form of religion. This idea is not consciously held by the savage—it takes shape only in highly developed thought (Plato, the New Testament, Christian and other mysticism). If the impulse to religion be thought to be love of life (so Leuba, in the Monist, July, 1901), this is substantially desire for safety and happiness.

[4] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 170.

[5] Gen. xxviii, 20-22; Hos. ii; Ezek. xxxvi; and the Psalter passim.

[6] The classic expression of this view is given by Statius (Th. 3, 661): primus in orbe deos fecit timor. Cf. L. Marillier, in International Monthly, ii (1900), 362 ff.

[7] For numerous examples of the belief in supernatural birth see E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity.

[8] Modern civilised nations, after victories in war, commonly assume that God has thus pronounced in favor of the justice and right of their side, and sing Te Deums.

[9] This vagueness reappears in some systems of late philosophic speculation. On the question whether a sense of the divine exists anterior to conscious experience cf. Marett, Threshold of Religion.

[10] This is only a particular application of the general assumption that all human powers exist in germ in the lowest human forms. Discussions of the sense of the infinite are found in the Gifford Lectures of F. Max Mueller and Tiele, and in Jastrow's Study of Religion. But early man thinks only of the particular objects with which he comes into contact; the later belief in an Infinite is a product of experience and reflection.

[11] Cf. Annee sociologique, iii (1898-1899), 205 ff.

[12] On the Fuegians cf. R. Fitzroy, in Voyages of the Adventure and the Beagle, ii (1831-1836), 179 ff.; on the African Pygmies, A. de Quatrefages, The Pygmies (Eng. tr., 1895), p. 124 ff.; W. Schmidt, Pygmaeenvoelker, p. 231 ff.; on Ceylon, T. H. Parker, Ancient Ceylon, iv; and on the Guaranis and Tapuyas (Botocudos) of Brazil, Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie, iii, 418, and the references in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii, 837 f. The Fuegians are said to stand in awe of a "black man" who, they believe, lives in the forest and punishes bad actions. On the people of New Guinea see C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea, chaps. 16, 25, 48, 55.

[13] Such relations exist between men and the vague force variously called mana, manitu, wakonda; but the conception of this force is scientific rather than religious, though it is brought into connection with religious ideas and usages.

[14] The evidence is summed up in G. d'Alviella's Hibbert Lectures. Cf. Brinton, Religion of Primitive Peoples, p. 30 ff.

[15] The question whether the religious sense exists in the lower animals is discussed by Darwin, Descent of Man (1871), p. 65 ff., 101 f., and others. The question is similar to that respecting conscience; in both cases there is in beasts a germ that appears never to grow beyond a certain point. On the genesis of the moral sense see (besides the works of Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and their successors) G. H. Palmer, The Field of Ethics; L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution; E. Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. In regard to religious feeling we observe in certain animals, especially in the domesticated dog, an attitude of dependence and devotion toward the master as a superior Power that is similar to the attitude of man toward a deity, only with more affection and self-surrender. But in the animal, so far as we can judge, the intellectual and ethical conceptions do not come to their full rights—there is no idea of a Power possessing moral qualities and controlling all phenomena. The beast, therefore, is not religious in the proper sense of the term. But between the beast and the first man the difference may have been not great.

[16] The Central Australians, however, have an elaborate marriage law with the simplest political organization and the minimum of religion.

[17] Cf. L. M. Keasbey, in International Monthly, i (1900), 355 ff.; I. King, The Development of Religion, Introduction.

[18] Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. xi f.

[19] Beasts, plants, and what we call inanimate objects, also are held, in early stages of civilization, to have souls—a natural inference from the belief that these last are alive and that all things have a nature like that of man.

[20] So Semitic nafs 'soul,' ruh 'spirit'; Sanskrit diman 'soul,' 'self'; Greek psyche, pneuma; Latin anima, spiritus; possibly English ghost (properly gost 'spirit'); and so in many low tribes. See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 432 f.; O. Schrader, in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii, 15.

[21] The expression 'to receive the last breath' (AEneid, iv, 684 f.), used by us to represent the last pious duty paid to a dying man, was thus originally understood in a strictly literal sense.

[22] So the Delaware Indians (Brinton, The Lenape, p. 67).

[23] Cf. the name 'shade' (Greeks, Redmen, and others) for the denizens of the Underworld.

[24] Photographs are now looked on by some half-civilized peoples with suspicion and fear as separate personalities that may be operated on by magical methods. A similar feeling exists in regard to the name of a man or a god—it is held to be somehow identical with the person, and for this reason is often concealed from outsiders.

[25] Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 402; Fraser, Golden Bough, 1st ed., i, 178 f.; article "Blood" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

[26] So in the Old Testament, in the later ritual codes: Deut. xii, 23; Lev. xvii, 14; Gen. ix, 4; and so Ps. lxxii, 14; cf. Koran, xcvi, 2 (man created of blood).

[27] Iliad, xiv, 518; xvii, 86; cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 40 n. (Arabic expression: "Life flows on the spear-point").

[28] R. B. Dixon, The Northern Maidu, p. 259.

[29] So friendly (fraternal) compacts between individuals are sealed by exchange of blood, whereby the parties to the covenant become one; many examples are given in H. C. Trumbull's Blood-Covenant, 2d ed.

[30] In many languages (Semitic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, English, German, etc.) the word for 'soul' is used in the sense of 'person' or 'self.' But the conception of "life" was in early times broader than that of "person" or that of "soul."

[31] An incorporeal or immaterial soul has never been conceivable.

[32] For old-German examples see Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 297; for Guiana, E. F. im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi, 368; compare the belief in the hidden soul, spoken of below, and article "Animals" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

[33] So the bush-soul or beast-soul among the Eẃe-speaking peoples of West Africa (A. B. Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, p. 103) and in Calabar (Kingsley, West African Studies). Spirits (Castren, Finnische Mythologie, p. 186) and demons (as in witchcraft trials) sometimes take the form of beasts. For American Indian examples see Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 294.

[34] See the Egyptian representations of the soul as bird (Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible and Homer, pl. cvi, 2; cix, 4, etc.); Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 183, compare p. 109. Other examples are given by H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i, 355 ff.; N. W. Thomas, in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, i, 488. On siren and ker as forms of the soul see Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 139, 197-217. Cf. Hadrian's address to the soul:

Animula vagula blandula Hospes comesque corporis Quae nunc abibis in loca Pallidula rigida nudula Nec ut soles dabis jocos?

[35] The body is spoken of as the person, for example, in Iliad, i. 4; Ps. xvi, 9.

[36] Hence various means of preserving the body by mummification, and the fear of mutilation.

[37] On the cult of skulls in the Torres Straits and Borneo see Haddon, Head-hunters, chap. xxiv.

[38] J. H. Bernan, British Guiana, p. 134.

[39] See Old Testament passim, and lexicons of the various Semitic languages.

[40] An elaborate account of the loci of qualities is given by Plato in the Timaeus, 69 ff.

[41] On the importance attached to the liver as the seat of life see Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, p. 149 ff.

[42] Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 2d ed., i, 101 f., quoted in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, article "Brain and Mind."

[43] Phaedo, 96 B; Timaeus, 44.

[44] Tusc. Disp. i, 9, 19; cf. Plautus, Aulul. ii, 1, 30.

[45] Arabic dimaĝ appears to mean 'marrow,' but how early it was employed for 'brain' is uncertain.

[46] Waitz, Anthropologie, iii, 225; cf. Roger Williams, Languages of America, p. 86.

[47] Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv (the Karens).

[48] Cranz, Greenland (Eng. tr.) i, 184.

[49] Examples in Frazer, Golden Bough, chap. ii.

[50] Sec. 25.

[51] For folk-tales of the hidden 'external' soul see Frazer, Golden Bough, 2d ed., iii, 389 ff.

[52] The coyote (in Navaho Legends, by W. Matthews, p. 91) kept his vital soul in the tip of his nose and in the end of his tail.

[53] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xviii, 310.

[54] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 124. Andrew Lang (in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor) holds that this Australian view comes not from ignorance but from the desire to assign a worthy origin to man in distinction from the lower animals. Some tribes in North Queensland think that the latter have not souls, and are born by sexual union, but the human soul, they say, can come only from a spiritual being. Decision on this question must await further information.

[55] Spencer and Gillen, loc. cit.

[56] Journal of American Folklore, xvii, 4.

[57] Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 530 (the child is the returned soul of an ancestor).

[58] Codrington, Melanesians, p. 154 (a spirit child enters a woman); cf. Journal of the American Oriental Society, viii, 297 (the Nusairi), and Lyde, in Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 115; Hartland, Primitive Paternity, i, 50, and chap. 3 passim.

[59] A. B. Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, p. 15; The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 18.

[60] For the belief that the soul of the child comes from the shades see Journal of American Folklore, xiv, 83. Further, Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. xii; Lang, in article cited above; Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 96.

[61] Possibly a survival of the theory is to be recognized in the custom, prevalent among some peoples, of naming a male child after his grandfather; examples are given in Gray, Hebrew Proper Names, p. 2 f. All such theories appear to rest on a dim conception of the vital solidarity of the tribe or clan—the vital force is held to be transmissible; cf. the idea of mana, a force inherent in things.

[62] Gen. ii, 7; cf. Ezek. xxxvii, 10.

[63] Timaeus, 34 f.

[64] De Sen. 21, 77; Tusc. Disp. v, 13, 38.

[65] The term 'sacred' in early thought has no ethical significance; it involves only the idea that an object is imbued with some superhuman quality, and is therefore dangerous and not to be touched.

[66] On modes of burial, see article "Funerailles" in La Grande Encyclopedie. Other considerations, however (hygienic, for example), may have had influence on the treatment of corpses.

[67] In the Talmud the books of the Sacred Scriptures are said to "defile the hands," that is, they are taboo (Yadaim, Mishna, 3, 5).

[68] The lower animals also are sometimes credited with more than one soul: so the bear among the Sioux (Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, vi, 28; Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, iii, 229).

[69] Williams, Fiji, i, 241; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 434, cf. Brinton, Lenape, p. 69; Cross, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv, 310 (Karens); W. Ellis, Madagascar, i, 393; A. B. Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, p. 114, and The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 149 ff.; Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 200 ff.; Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 50.

[70] Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv, 310.

[71] Cf. Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 530.

[72] See below, Sec. 46 ff.

[73] See Maspero (1897), Dawn of Civilization, p. 108 f.; W. M. Mueller in Encyclopaedia Biblica, article "Egypt"; Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, pp. 30 ff., 48 ff.; Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 63 f.; Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, pp. 86 f., 108; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 234 ff.

[74] R. H. Charles in his Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian, p. 153, holds that the Hebrews made a distinction between soul and spirit (the former being "living" only when the latter is present), and that the recognition of this distinction is necessary for the understanding of the Old Testament conception of immortality. His discussion is valuable if not convincing.

[75] 1 Kings xxii, 21 f.

[76] For the New Testament usage see 1 Cor. vi, 17; 2 Cor. iv, 21; xii, 18; Luke ix, 53 (in some MSS.); Rev. xix, 10; John vi, 63. Cf. Grimm, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, ed. J. H. Thayer, s. vv. pneuma and psyche.

[77] Cf. Rohde, Psyche, 3d ed., i, 45 n.; ii, 141, n. 2.

[78] In philosophical thought the two are sometimes distinguished: the anima is the principle of life, and the animus of thinking mind (Lucretius, iii, 94-141).

[79] A curious resemblance to the cult of the 'genius' is found in the Eẃe (Dahomi) custom of consecrating a man's birthday to his "indwelling spirit" (A. B. Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, 105). Compare Horace's designation of the genius as 'naturae deus humanae' (Ep. ii, 2, 188), and Servius on Verg., Georg. i, 302.

[80] So in Plato and Aristotle, and in Brahmanism.

[81] The evidence for this belief is found in hundreds of books that record observations of savage ideas, and it is unnecessary to cite particular examples.

[82] Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, p. 108. Cf. Hinde, The Last of the Masai, p. 99.

[83] D. Macdonald, Africana, i, 58 f.

[84] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, x, 283; cf. Codrington, Melanesians, p. 277.

[85] Rink, Tales of the Eskimo, p. 36.

[86] See above, Sec. 41.

[87] Thomas Williams, Fiji, i, 244. Cf. W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i, 303.

[88] Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, p. 160.

[89] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix, 118 f.

[90] Jarves, History of the Sandwich Islands, p. 42. Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2d ed., ii, 22 f., and Codrington, The Melanesians p. 256 ff.

[91] Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 530 f.

[92] Kingsley, Travels, p. 444.

[93] Polynesian Researches, p. 218.

[94] Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, pp. 112, 185.

[95] Tailtiriya Brahmana, 3, 11, 8, 5; Catapatha Brahmana, 12, 9, 3, 12. Cf. Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, p. 253.

[96] The same remark holds of later conceptions of the departed soul and of deities.

[97] Mariner, Tonga, pp. 328, 343. Gods also die, as in the Egyptian religious creed (Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 111), in Greek myths and folk-beliefs (the grave of Zeus, etc.), and in the Norse myth of the combat of the gods with the giants.

[98] Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, chap. xxv.

[99] 1 Sam. xxvii, 11 f.; Ezek. xxxii, 17 f.; Isa. xiv, 9 f. Eccl. iii, 19 f., ix, 5, 6, 10, which are sometimes cited in support of the opposite opinion, belong not to the Jewish popular belief, but to a late academic system which is colored by Greek skeptical philosophy. All other late Jewish books (Apocrypha, New Testament, Talmud) assume the continued existence of the soul in the other world.

[100] See above, Sec. 43.

[101] Hopkins, Religions of India, pp. 130, 143 ff., 396; Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 111 ff.; Spiegel, Eranische Alterthiunskunde, ii, 161 ff.; Wiedemann, Egyptian Doctrine of Immortality; De Groot, Religion of the Chinese, chap. iii.

[102] On the Homeric usage see Rohde, Psyche, as cited above, Sec. 43.

[103] Several early Christian writers (Tatian, Address to the Greeks, 13; Justin, Trypho, cap. vi) held that souls are naturally mortal, but these views did not affect the general Christian position.

[104] Such as Ezek. xviii, 4. This view appears in Clementine Homilies, vii, 1.

[105] Cf. W. R. Alger, Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life; Harvard Ingersoll Lectures on "The Immortality of Man."

[106] Cf. H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i, chap. xv; article "Blest, abode of the," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

[107] Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. xii f.

[108] Cf. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, i, 254, and chap. iii.

[109] In Primitive Culture, chap. xii.

[110] In La survivance de l'ame, passim.

[111] See also the discussion of the subject in Alger, op. cit. (in Sec. 53), p. 62 f. This work contains a bibliography of the future state (by Ezra Abbot) substantially complete up to the year 1862.

[112] Cf. Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 295 f.

[113] M. Kingsley, Studies, p. 122; Travels, p. 445.

[114] Haddon, Head-hunters, p. 179 ff.

[115] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, Index, s.v. Alcheringa; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 271.

[116] A. B. Ellis, Yoruba, p. 128.

[117] Cf. especially the Central Australian conception.

[118] It is involved in all monistic systems. It appears also to be silently made in the Old Testament: the lower animals, like man, are vivified by the "breath of God" (Ps. civ, 29, 30; cf. Gen. ii, 7; vii, 22), and are destroyed in the flood because of the wickedness of man (Gen. vi, 5-7); cf. also Rom. viii, 22.

[119] So in the Upanishads (but not in the poetic Veda); see Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 227; Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, p. 257. Tylor (Primitive Culture, ii, 18) points out that in this conception we have a suggestion of the theory of development in organic life.

[120] So the Central Australians (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 514), the Californian Maidu (Dixon, The Northern Maidu, p. 246). Cf. the cases in which precautions are taken against a ghost's entering its old earthly abode.

[121] Rig-Veda, 15.

[122] Spencer and Gillen, loc. cit. and p. 516 f.

[123] Probably the Greek ker ([Greek: ker]) and the Teutonic 'nightmare,' French cauchemar (mara, an incubus, or succuba), belong in this class of malefic ghosts.

[124] See below, Sec. 92.

[125] Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, i, 141 ff.

[126] For West Africa see above, Sec. 43, n. 2; for the Norse fylgja ('follower') cf. Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 292 ff.

[127] Sec. 38, n. 2.

[128] A transitional stage is marked by the theory, in a polypsychic system, that one soul remains near the body while another goes to the distant land.

[129] So, perhaps, among the eastern Polynesians (W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i, 303) and the Navahos (Matthews, Navaho Legends, p. 38).

[130] Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, chap. iii, 183 ff.; Teit, Thompson River Indians, p. 85; Rink, Tales of the Eskimo, p. 40.

[131] Odyssey, xi (by the encircling Okeanos); Williams, Fiji, p. 192; Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 288 f.; Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 290; Rig-Veda, x, 63, 10; ix, 41, 2.

[132] Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 65; Charon; Saussaye, op. cit., p. 290; Rohde, Psyche, 3d ed., i, 306. For the story given by Procopius (De Bell. Goth. iv, 20) see Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 64 f.

[133] Saussaye, op. cit., p. 291.

[134] Rig-Veda, x, 154, 4, 5; Lister in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxi, 51 (moon). Cf. Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 64; Hopkins, Religions of India, pp. 129, 206; Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 284 ff.; Mueller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, i, 288 ff.; Saussaye, op. cit., p. 291; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i, 232 f.