wrong-doer has offended against the
supernatural powers and has brought down calamity upon the community.
He is therefore punished, directly as an offender against the god of
the community, and indirectly for having involved the {235} community
in suffering. In Dr. Westermarck's words (I, 194), there is "genuine
indignation against the offender, both because he rebels against God,
and because he thereby exposes the whole community to supernatural
dangers." But though society for many long centuries continues to
punish rebellion against God, still in the long run it ceases, or tends
to cease, doing so. Its reason for so ceasing is interpreted
differently by different schools of thought. On the one hand, it is
said in derision, let the gods punish offences against the gods--the
implication being that there are no such offences to punish, because
there is no god. On the other hand, it is said, "I will repay, saith
the Lord"--the implication being that man may not assume to be the
minister of divine vengeance. If, then, we bear in mind that the fact
may be interpreted in either of these different ways, we shall not fall
into the fallacy of imagining that the mere existence of the fact
suffices to prove either interpretation to be true. Yet this fallacy
plays its part in lending fictitious support to the doctrine that
morality is in no wise dependent upon religion. The offences now
punished by law, it is argued, are no longer punished as offences
against religion, but solely as offences {236} against the good of the
community. To this argument the reply is that men believe the good of
the community to be the will of God, and do not believe murder, theft,
adultery, etc., to be merely offences against man's laws. Overlooking
this fact, which is fatal to the doctrine that morality is in no wise
dependent on religion, the argument we are discussing proceeds to
maintain that the basis for the enforcement of morality by the law is
recognised by every one who knows anything of the philosophy of law to
be what is good for the community and its members: fraud and violence
are punished as such, and not because they are offences against this or
that religion. The fact that the law no longer punishes them as
offences against God suffices to show that it is only as offences
against humanity that there is any sense, or ever was any sense, in
punishing them. Religion may have reenforced morality very usefully at
one time, by ma