343 
But in support of the view that social morality is largely inde- 
pendent of professedly Divine Religion, Mr. Mill then refers to 
Greece as perhaps an historical instance. 
We wholly demur to this, however, and a man’s historical 
knowledge must, we think, be slender who accepts it. DuCouianges 
Any who may wish brief satisfaction on the subject, refiitatTn 
as matter of fact, may find it in the work of Professor as to Mr. Mill’s 
Du Coulanges, of Strasbourg, entitled La Cite An- supposed facts - 
tique, crowned by the French Academy. As a simple inductive 
proof that the primitive bond of all human society was Religion, it 
has a kind of completeness. There ever was a religious sacredness 
in all social “authority,” little as Mr. Mill seems to recognize it, 
whether in the family, the tribe, the race, the city, or the state. 
Not only every city, but every society within a city, had its 
special “religion.” To speculate now that men could have done 
without it, or that the ends of society were otherwise attainable, 
is useless, if the truth be that an association Avithout, in some 
sense, its God is not to be found. 
The social law of ancient Greece specially referred to, (or of 
ancient Rome also), was all founded as much on Religion as was 
that of Egypt itself. The Lacedaemonians even believed that their 
laws came not from Lycurgus, but from Apollo; the Cretans theirs, 
not from Minos, but from Jupiter ; the Romans, not 
from Numa, but from the goddess Egeria ; and so opposition^ to 
on. Mr. Mill must have forgotten the Homer and Mr -Miii’ssup- 
the Aristotle, which we are told he read in his very 
early childhood. (See Aristot., Pol., iii. 14.) Lacedaemon is a 
peculiarly unfortunate allusion for Mr. Mill’s case, for the Lace- 
daemonians committed to their kings the ordering of all the high 
concerns of the entire national Religion, as much as the Athenians 
did to the Archons, or the Romans to the Pontiff. 
39- The facts of “ Authority,” “ Tradition,” “ Education,” 
or “ Public Opinion,” as alluded to by Mr. Mill and his two 
teachers, prove then to tell all against his hypothesis. If history 
is to be appealed to at all, it shows Religion to be so imbedded in 
tbe social consciousness that nothing could ever displace it. 
To maintain this as historically certain is to destroy the 
ground of those Avho Avould uphold Religion, T he anterior 
merely for the sake of its usefulness. A tacit admis- necessity of 
sion of the untruth of Religion is at the bottom of hinders not the 
their supposition ; and this could not be concealed, utuity'^but 
And who can doubt that to discover a falsehood is supposes it. 
to deprive it of its poAver ? It must long since have died out. 
Without question, the Utility of Religion to society, or to the 
individual, (i. e. the actual and subsequent utility,) is included 
in the idea of its anterior necessity, but it is no part of the argu- 
