104 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
rective forces that guard from abuse the other agencies of con- trol seem to be wanting here. History testifies that belief implies a very dangerous sacerdotal ascendency that has perhaps been as often used against the common interest as for it.
For these reasons the system of supernatural sanctions, how- ever serviceable it may have been during the early stages of social evolution, when laws were feeble, men fierce, and the finer instruments of discipline almost unknown, is today a decadent form of social control destined to dwindle in relative impor- tance as time goes on.
We have yet to show how belief came to be the handmaiden of social control.
Modern scholarship, unlike eighteenth century opinion, holds that belief in superhuman beings was not devised as an engine of priestcraft or statecraft. Belief everywhere had a long career before it was turned to account for social purposes. Even after this the subordination was not complete, and dogma con- tinued to be shaped by other influences. We must admit at least two forces as cooperating with the social motive in the development of belief, viz., the speculative impulse and the yearning for consolation. Theology was undoubtedly a theory of things when it predicated another life and another world ; undoubtedly a disciplinary tool when it differentiated the other world into heaven and hell. The enormous development of popular theology from Jesus to Anselm must have been largely due to the demands of a hierarchy confronted with the problem of maintaining order after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
To see how belief became ethical, let us take the Semitic religion. In a chaos of superstitions regarding ghosts, our attention is fixed by the attitude of a group of kinsmen toward the spirit of a departed ancestor. The feeling here was not fear, but rather the trust and fellowship that was possible only between those who were held together by the bond of blood kinship. The branch of belief that led to the practice of magic
