724 Dynamic Theory. 



disturbed, there being no such common field to enforce peaceful settle- 

 ment, they do not hesitate to invade, murder and plunder each other. 

 A law without penalties for its infringment would never be enforced. 

 Neither human beings nor any other sort of beings ever did anything 

 except upon the compulsion of motives direct or indirect. What is now 

 called moral restraint when it is traced back to its origin is found to be 

 the restraint of the sense of impending or threatened phj^sical injuiy. 

 Any sort of social intercourse shows men at once the liability of certain 

 injurious results to follow the perpetration of certain offenses. In fact, 

 the only way they could know that an act was an offense, would be by 

 the injurious effect which followed it. A society, however primitive, im- 

 poses physical penalties in self defense, and will tend to rid itself of 

 those members who will not conform to the law of the interests of the 

 mass. This process will act in the formulation of a moral code, written 

 or unwritten, and in the development of a feeling of restraint, or in other 

 words a moral sense, as soon as the community possesses intelligence 

 enough. But when that time arrives men also begin to take account of 

 their general relationships to external nature. They begin to see many 

 things they cannot understand and find themselves in the presence of 

 forces which they cannot escape or control. They naturally do the only 

 thing left them to do; viz., they try to conciliate these forces, and hence 

 the idea of religious obligation arises almost as early as that of moral 

 obligation. The essential element of all religion is the conciliation of 

 supernatural powers which if not conciliated would be hostile. The 

 hostility of these superior powers or gods, was at first supposed to be 

 shown in bad crops, storms, droughts, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, 

 defeat in war, &c. , many or most of which disasters affect alike whole 

 communities. Hence, the conciliation of the beings responsible for 

 these disasters, naturally and necessarily became a duty of the whole 

 community as such, and this conciliation business naturally becomes a 

 function of the state. It is obvious that in such a matter it would be 

 illogical for the governing authorities to allow individuals to endanger 

 the public welfare by any dissenting action of theirs liable to neutralize 

 or thwart the beneficial effects of the public ceremonials. In a perfectly 

 natural way the idea became prevalent that individuals by their impiety 

 could do this. It is related of Jonah that when he was making his vo}'- 

 age from Joppa to Tarshish to escape from the Lord, a great tempest 

 arose in the Mediterranean Sea all on his account and it calmed down 

 again as soon as he was thrown overboard. We can easily perceive from 

 this how naturally the community would become interested in seeing 

 that every man should perform his religious duties. Furthermore, 

 every individual would be interested in making his neighbor contribute 

 his fair share of wealth to keep up the public sacrifices, to build the 



