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