THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF RELIGION 441 



tion, the sharp phraseology of which sounds even in Biblical stat- 

 ute, is involved in primary religious constructions which, as will 

 recur to mind, have also affected the language of the Decalogue, 

 while, what is not as readily recognized, the social institutions devel- 

 oped from them are reflected in the formulation of the mystery of 

 transmitted sin and subsequent salvation, as devised in Paul's 

 theology. The thought that for the death of one Adam that of an- 

 other was able and required to atone could not have occurred to 

 thinker or believer, unless the Semitic practice which held clansman 

 accountable for fellow clansman's or ancestor's act had previously 

 formed part of his mental equipment. These instances may suffice. 

 They suggest the intimate relations of social institution and religious 

 dogma. In viewing religion then as a social force, modern thought 

 ranges over familiar ground. It is neither revolutionary nor even 

 original. 



The viewpoint of the religionist is perhaps different from that of 

 the sociologist. But the insistences of the one complement those 

 of the other. The conceptions of him who would introduce religious 

 considerations among the factors of the social equation may justly 

 be claimed to be necessary in order to confer stability and effective- 

 ness on the contentions of those that approach the questions affecting 

 man's relation to fellow man from the direction exclusively of social 

 impacts and interactions. 



Socially analyzed, the humankind as now existent constitutes an 

 aggregate of producers and consumers. Hunger is the impelling 

 force. Greed, appetite, ambition, self-interest, instinct of self- 

 preservation and self-perpetuation through procreation - - all these 

 and many more familiar shibboleths are, upon close inspection, 

 detected to be but variations of the first and formidable and funda- 

 mental fact that men are under the dominion and lash of insatiable 

 hunger. Social action and interaction aim at minimizing the danger 

 that hunger might exceed at any one time the means at hand to 

 appease it temporarily. They are,. in fact, the outcome of long and 

 weary ages of experimentation, which at last forced upon men the 

 dim recognition that hunger is more effectively combated through 

 cooperation than through individual effort. 



Still this very struggle with hunger reveals the inequality of the 

 equipment for the fray in the component factors of society. Hence 

 the human family divides into masters and leaders on the one hand, 

 and slaves and followers on the other, the greater proportion of the 

 booty going to the former. To bring about a more even distribution, 

 combinations of men are formed on the part of the less well-equipped, 

 which in turn suggest the formation of similar combinations on 

 the part of the better armored in defense of their greater share 

 of the prizes of this battle with hunger. Without the technicalities 



