religion, both alike rudimentary, has left in the depths of the human soul the vague ideal of a more developed morality and an organized religion dependent the one on the other. It is none the less true that morality has taken definite shape along its own lines, that religions have evolved along theirs, and that men have always accepted their gods from tradition without asking them for a certificate of good conduct, nor expecting them to guarantee the moral order. But a distinction must be drawn between social obligations of a very general character, without which no life in common would be possible, and the particular concrete social tie which causes the members of a particular social community to be intent on its preservation. The first have little by little emerged from the confused background of customs which we have found at the outset; they have emerged through purification and simplification, through abstraction and generalization, to form a social morality. But what binds together the members of a given society is tradi- 176 STATIC RELIGION CH. 'tion, the need and the determination to defend the group against other groups and to set it above everything. To pre- serve, to tighten this bond is incontestably one aim of the religion we have found to be natural; it is common to the members of a group, it associates them intimately with each other in rites and ceremonies, it disfhiguishes the group from other groups, it guarantees the success of the common enter-