irits which animated inanimate things but which were not the
protectors of any human community, were, for the very reason that they
were not the gods of any community, "not concerned with morality."
Spirits, however, which were the protectors of a community necessarily
upheld the customs and therefore the morality of the community; they
were not "without ethical significance." It was an essential part of
the very conception of such spirits--of spirits standing in this
relation to the community--that they were "ethical powers." Hoeffding's
dictum that "the gods appear as powers on which man is dependent, but
not as patterns of conduct or administrators of an ethical world order"
(p. 323), overlooks the fact that in the earliest times not only are
gods powers on which man is dependent, but powers which enforce the
conduct required by the custom of the community and sanction the
ethical order as {220} far as it has then been revealed. The fact that
"the worship of the family, of the clan, or of the nation is shared in
by all," not merely "helps to nourish a feeling of solidarity which may
acquire ethical significance," as Hoeffding says (p. 325), it creates a
solidarity which otherwise would not exist. If there were no worship
shared in by all, there would be no religious solidarity; and, judging
from the very general, if not universal, occurrence of religion in the
lowest races as well as the highest, we may conjecture that without
religious solidarity a tribe found it hard or impossible to survive in
the struggle for existence. That religious solidarity however is not,
as Hoeffding suggests, something which may eventually "acquire ethical
significance"; it is in its essence and from the beginning the worship
of a god who punishes the community for the ethical transgression of
its members, because they are not merely violations of the custom of
the community, but offences against him. When Hoeffding says (p. 328)
"religious faith ... assumes an independent human ethic, which has, as
a matter of fact, developed historically under the practical influence
of the ethical feeling of man," he seems to overlook the fact that as a
matter of history human {221} ethics have always been based--rightly or
wrongly--on religious faith, that moral transgressions have always been
regarded as not merely wrongs done to a man's neighbour, but also as
offences against the god or gods of the community, that the person
suffering from foul