ld. The controlling consideration here is that everything must
have a cause--a line of reasoning in accordance with common sense, but
not always, in its crude form, regarded by philosophers as decisive.

+1013+. The moral character of a deity is always in accordance with the
moral ideas of his worshipers. Religions have sometimes been divided
into the ethical and the nonethical; but so far as the character of the
deity is concerned no such division holds, for there never has been a
supernatural Power that has not reflected the moral ideas of its time
and place. A cannibal god is not only natural in a cannibal society, but
he represents moral ideals, namely, the attempt to acquire strength by
absorbing the physical substance of men. The deity who deceives or is
vindictive arises in a society in which deceit and vindictiveness are
regarded as virtues. The pictures of what we regard as immoralities in
the deity as given in the Iliad and in the Old Testament were not
regarded as immoral by the writers. The progress in the characterization
of the deity has been not by the introduction of an ethical element, but
by the purification and elevation of the already existing ethical
element.[1829]

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION

+1014+. Religion is social because man is a social animal. This does not
exclude individual religion--in fact religion must have begun with
individuals, as is the case with all social movements. Morality, indeed,
understood as a system of conduct among human beings, could not exist
except in a society which included at least two persons; but if we could
imagine a quite isolated rational being, he might be religious if, as is
perfectly possible, he conceived himself as standing in relation with
some supernatural being or beings. This question, however, is not a
practical one--there is no evidence of such isolation, and no
probability that there ever has been a time when man was not social.

+1015+. It is generally agreed that men lived at first in small detached
groups, gradually forming tribes and nations, and finally effecting a
social fusion of nations. Religious worship has followed these changes.
Religion is simply one line of social growth existing along with others,
science, philosophy, art; all these, as is remarked above,[1830] go on
together, each influencing and influenced by the others. Human life has
always been unitary--no one part can be severed from the others; it is a