AN ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM AS A SOCIAL BOND. 769 



tion to his decisions concerning international disputes, and 

 in so far to diminish the dissolving effects of perpetual 

 conflicts: instance the acceptance of his arbitration by 

 Philip Augustus and Eichard I. under threat of ecclesiastical 

 punishment ; instance the maintenance of peace between the 

 kings of Castile and Portugal by Innocent III. under penalty 

 of excommunication ; instance Eleanor s invocation &quot; has not 

 God given you the power to govern nations ; &quot; instance the 

 formal enunciation of the theory that the pope was supreme 

 judge in disputes among princes. 



625. No less clearly do the facts justify the analogy 

 above pointed out between the recognized duty of fulfilling 

 a deceased parent s wishes, and the imperative obligation of 

 conforming to a divinely-ordained law. 



Twice in six months within my own small circle of friends, 

 I have seen exemplified the subordination of conduct to the 

 imagined dictate of a deceased person : the first example 

 being yielded by one who, after long hesitation, decided to 

 alter a house built by his father, but only in such way as he 

 thought his father would have approved ; the second being 

 yielded by one who, not himself objecting to play a game on 

 Sunday, declined because he thought his late wife would not 

 have liked it. If in such cases supposed wishes of the 

 dead become transformed into rules of conduct, much more 

 must expressed injunctions tend to do this. And since 

 maintenance of family- union is an end which such expressed 

 injunctions are always likely to have in view since the 

 commands of the dying patriarch, or the conquering chief, 

 naturally aim at prosperity of the clan or tribe he governed; 

 the rules or laws which ancestor-worship originates, will 

 usually be of a kind which, while intrinsically furthering 

 social cohesion, further it also by producing ideas of obliga 

 tion common to all. 



Already in 52930 I have pointed out that, among 

 primitive men, the customs which stand in place of laws, 



