s, the more
completely the social is confused with the religious life, the more
nearly economic institutions approach communism.

The division of labor, on the other hand, gives birth to regulations and
laws which determine the nature and the relations of the divided
functions, but the violation of which entails only punitive measures not
of an expiatory character.

Every code of laws is accompanied by a body of regulations purely moral.
Where the penal law is voluminous, moral consensus is very extended;
that is to say, a multitude of collective activities is under the
guardianship of public opinion. Where the right of reparation is well
developed, there each profession maintains a code of professional
ethics. In a group of workers there invariably exists a body of opinion,
diffused throughout the limits of the group, which, although not
fortified with legal sanctions, still enforces its decrees. There are
manners and customs, recognized by all the members of a profession,
which no one of them could infringe without incurring the blame of
society. Certainly this code of morals is distinguished from the
preceding by differences analogous to those which separate the two
corresponding kinds of laws. It is, in fact, a code localized in a
limited region of society. Furthermore, the repressive character of the
sanctions which are attached to it is sensibly less accentuated.
Professional faults arouse a much feebler response than offenses against
the mores of the larger society.

Nevertheless, the customs and code of a profession are imperative. They
oblige the individual to act in accordance with ends which to him are
not his own, to make concessions, to consent to compromises, to take
account of interests superior to his own. The consequence is that, even
where the society rests most completely upon the division of labor, it
does not disintegrate into a dust of atoms, between which there can
exist only external and temporary contacts. Every function which one
individual exercises is invariably dependent upon functions exercised by
others and forms with them a system of interdependent parts. It follows
that, from the nature of the task one chooses, corresponding duties
follow. Because we fill this or that domestic or social function, we are
imprisoned in a net of obligations from which we do not have the right
to free ourselves. There is especially one organ toward which our state
of dependencies is ever increasing--the s