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106 might, the protector of the poor, the widow and the fatherless, of the one who has no helper on earth."

The precise way in which the divine sanction was annexed to conduct appears to have been the extension of the idea of taboo. From very early times, men recognized certain spots as the haunts of the god, and therefore sacred from intrusion. Holy places and things were "surrounded by a network of restrictions and disabilities which forbid them to be used by men except in particular ways and in certain cases forbid them to be used at all." This place-taboo, which had within it the assertion of common property against private license, was extended to guard the sanctuary against acts or liberties that might offend the personal dignity of the god. At this point it needs but the socializing of the taboo to transform a jealous regard for sacred etiquette into an ethical holiness to which the sight of evil or injustice is an offense and an abomination.

Here lies the crisis in the history of religion. Belief, which has been hitherto a political badge, expressing on the one hand the alliance of the members of the political group, and, on the other, its separateness from any other group, now assumes a social office. It asserts not tribe against tribe but society against its individual members. It becomes an agent of social control. This momentous revolution is achieved by a very simple turn of ideas, viz., by conceiving that the god is pleased not by sacrifices, praise and ritual, but by certain forms of conduct and certain elements of character. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord; I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of hegoats." "Your new moons and appointed feast my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. … Cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

The same idea is expressed by Gautama when he said, "Rituals have no efficacy, prayers are vain repetitions and