276 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



function in the history of man, then, has been to 

 teach the duty of obedience. Society is founded upon 

 the willingness of the individual to yield some of his 

 present desires to the good of the community or to 

 the interest of the future. Without this yielding to 

 authority, kingdoms and nations would have been 

 an impossibility. Obedience is the keystone of gov- 

 ernment. When we recognize that religious beliefs 

 have always enforced upon the masses the spirit of 

 obedience, that monarchs have always tried to sup- 

 port their authority by the divine right; when we 

 remember that all people engage in religious rites 

 before entering upon battle, and that the greater 

 their faith and fanaticism the greater their willing- 

 ness to sacrifice life in the contest, then can we read- 

 ily see that religion has been the vitalizing force of 

 social development. The strongest nations of his- 

 tory have been those whose religion was the most 

 vital, controlling most completely the lives of the 

 people. The loss of religion has always been fol- 

 lowed by disintegration. Even in the nations of 

 antiquity this was evident. Our discussion of the 

 principles underlying organization would seem to 

 show that this must always happen. If we take 

 away from a people their religious belief, we take 

 away from them the logical reason why one indi- 

 vidual should yield to another for the good of society 

 or country. Patriotism is commonly founded on 

 faith. We may point out to a man, logically, that his 

 nation would be benefited if he would be willing to 

 sacrifice his own interests in behalf of that nation, 

 but we cannot give him any reason why he, the indi- 

 vidual, should have any care for such a fictitious 

 thing as a nation. We can logically show him the 



