and the continued existence of the society was
sufficient reason why a precedent once set should continue to be
followed.

I say that the oldest religious and political institutions present a
close analogy. It would be more correct to say that they were parts of
one whole of social custom. Religion was a part of the organised social
life into which a man was born, and to which he conformed through life
in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual practice
of the society in which they live. Men took the gods and their worship
for granted, just as they took the other usages of the state for
granted, and if they reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on
the presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things, behind
which their reasonings must not go, and which no reasoning could be
allowed to overturn. To us moderns religion is above all a matter of
individual conviction and reasoned belief, but to the ancients it was a
part of the citizen's public life, reduced to fixed forms, which he was
not bound to understand and was not at liberty to criticise or to
neglect. Religious non-conformity was an offence against the state; for
if sacred tradition was tampered with the bases of society were
undermined, and the favour of the gods was forfeited. But so long as the
prescribed forms were duly observed, a man was recognised as truly
pious, and no one asked how his religion was rooted in his heart or
affected his reason. Like political duty, of which indeed it was a part,
religion was entirely comprehended in the observance of certain fixed
rules of outward conduct.

From the antique point of view, indeed, the question what the gods are
in themselves is not a religious but a speculative one; what is
requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on
which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to frame
their conduct--what in II Kings 17:26 is called the "manner" or rather
the "customary law" (_mishpat_) of the god of the land. This is true
even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the knowledge
of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and
principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for
religion as a whole is "the knowledge and fear of Jehovah," i.e., the
knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent
obedience.

The traditional usages of religion had grown up gradually in the course
of