not irrevocable laws and it reshapes ideals, constantly working them out in conduct and rationalizing the social order.

It is interesting to pass from this text-book on morals to L. T. Hobhouse's original investigation in the same field, "Morals in Evolution."12 The reader becomes convinced that this study is superior to any other of the kind. Hobhouse's conception of morality has a breadth that is consonant with the present tendency to define morals in terms of the attitudes, actions and organized practices of the people or peoples studied, and not simply in terms of virtues and vices. Two attributes are essential to morality according to Hobhouse, the one being the "conception of the Good" (p. 18) and the other being "the regulation of life" (p. 613). His definition of religion, unfortunately, is such as to preclude his recognition of some of the subtle connections between it and morals. Religion in its lowest forms, he says, is animism. Magic, which he defines in the now familiar terms of Frazer, is to be marked off from religion. Hobhouse illustrates how important the relation of religion and morals is felt to be, for he finds it necessary to devote one hundred and sixty pages (365-526), or about one quarter of his book on morals, to the religions of peoples in times past and present and in conditions of civilization and of barbarism in order to find the answer given by religion to the question, Whence comes the notion of moral obligation? Of course these pages can contain only a summary of the results of such an investigation. A dozen pages suffice to set forth beliefs and practices connected with souls, among civilized and uncivilized peoples on all the continents. The next half-dozen pages place in view the yet troublesome subject of magic. The supernormal and the mysterious are examined hastily in a few pages. Matter relating to "Myth, Culture, Heroes and Creators" finds sufficient space in another half-dozen pages. The next dozen present the polytheism of the ancients. Then, in a chapter of two score pages, an attempt is made to determine the ethical conceptions underlying magic, animism and polytheism. Two additional chapters complete the treatment, one dealing with Buddhism, Brahmanism and Taoism, the other with monotheism-Judaism and Christianity.

In presenting these subjects Hobhouse makes a number of remarks concerning the relation of religion and morals. Among the so-called primitive races customs are obeyed because breaches mean misfortune for the whole community, possibly since retribution is a consequence of wrong-doing. Such misfortune may be sent by a spirit that was wronged by the breach of the custom. So one finds that in the "lowest grades of ethical thought the sanction of conduct is found in taboos. and other magical terrors or in the fear of vindictive and resentful spirits." Among the peoples whose thought and conduct are along these lines, magic has no moral purpose and the animistic spirits are unmoral essentially. They engender in man mere dread of vengeance so that social rules generally speaking are not conceived clearly as moral obligations. A forward step is found to have been taken among those peoples that have real gods, for they generally are connected definitely with ethics-they punish the guilty for their guilt, and so on. But even here ethical thinking is unclear since the gods themselves may do wrong. Monotheistic religions, with their allgood god and genuine ethical ideals, are really spiritual religions and bring newer ethical conceptions. They range humility, forgiveness, benevolence and brotherhood over against pride, resentment, mere love of kin, and interest mainly or solely in family life.

Recently there appeared in the field of religion a remarkable study by Emile Durkheim entitled "Elementary Forms of the Religious Life."1 Morality is not the predominant interest in this study and he does not, in consequence, define it. Religion he does examine and define with much care. After two score pages of discussion concerning the nature of religion the following is set down: "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." Durkheim's object is to determine the origin and nature of religion. To support the conclusions he reaches, he wishes to examine a really primitive religion. He arrives finally at the opinion that the most primitive religion is totemism which is the religion of the clan, to him the 18 Tr. by J. W. Swain. (London and New York, 1915.)

simplest social organization known. His investigation resolves itself therefore into a study of totemism and the clan, and is carried on among the Australians since among them both institutions were developed highly.

Durkheim has some striking statements to make regarding the relation of religion and morals (particularly pp. 167–226 passim, 387, 420). He concludes that religion and morality among these savages are identical. The social organization in which totemism obtains is bound up with religion because the members of a single clan are united by three essentially religious bonds: they have the same name and the same emblem, they believe that they have the same relations with the same categories of things, and they practice the same rites. In a word, they participate in the same totemic cult. Moreover, the totem is the source of the moral life of the clan since the beings of the same totem are bound together morally in duties of assistance, vendetta and so on. These duties constitute kinship. Durkheim then seeks the principle underlying totemism and discovers that the notion of mana is the root from which totemism has grown. Having gone so far he grapples for many pages with the problem: What is it that makes religion obligatory, that is, what form of the moral authority inheres in religion? He concludes that religious forces are moral because they are made up entirely of the impressions which this moral being, the group, arouses in those other moral beings, its individual members. The religious forces do not translate the manner in which physical things affect the senses, but they do translate the way in which the collective consciousness acts upon individual consciousnesses. Hence their authority is one form of the moral ascendancy of society over its members. Moreover, religious forces are also conceived of under material forms and therefore could not fail to be regarded as related closely to material things. Religious forces, then, dominate two worlds. They reside in men, but at the same time they are the vital principles of things; they animate minds and discipline them, and they also make plants grow and animals reproduce. "It is this double nature which has enabled religion to be like the womb from which come all the leading germs of civilization." Since religion has been made to embrace all of reality-the physical world as well as the moral

the forces that move bodies as well as those that move minds have been conceived in a religious form. "That is how the most diverse methods and practices, both those that make possible the continuation of the moral life (law, morals, beauxarts) and those serving the material life (the natural, technical and practical sciences), are either directly or indirectly derived from religion" (p. 223).

Several of the above mentioned writers hold a number of conclusions in common. All agree that a clearly defined distinction between the religious sphere and the moral can not be made. Although a few of them are of the opinion that there was once a close identity of the two spheres, most of them are in agreement with Leuba's thought that religion and morals probably had independent origins, but have become interrelated. Distinct as may have been the viewpoints from which the writers looked for evidence of the interconnection of the moral and the religious, the conclusions they reached have been complementary rather than contradictory. None denies that a people who have "real gods" also have ethical obligations that are sanctioned by these gods. Bussell approached the problem not from the side of deities but from that of social organization. Nevertheless he is sure that he recognizes notions concerning such organization that are essentially religious notions; and his opinion is acceptable to Durkheim, Dewey and Tufts, and others. Yet another approach was made by way of the conduct of individuals. Fully half the writers have stated that conduct is sanctioned frequently by supernatural powers. It is established with some definiteness then, that from the side of morals the conduct of individuals often shows religious influence in the form of belief or of sanction for the conduct; and that from the side of religion genuine deities are concerned not only with religious affairs but also with earthly conduct, since they approve or disapprove of forms of behavior.

The writers disagree upon one matter. Wundt, Hoeffding and Hobhouse say that in the "animistic stage" gods are not moral; Durkheim and others do not accept that statement. This difference in opinion is mentioned because it indicates the enormous handicap under which these pioneer investigators labored. None had at his disposal detailed studies of the rela

tion of religion and morals among peoples in many times and places. The impulse on the part of these investigators, who have not been interested primarily in this relationship, nevertheless to make some track across the virgin field emphasizes the importance of the problem. It must become obvious that nothing final can be done until there exists a series of studies, based upon investigations among peoples everywhere and in every time, of the actual relationship obtaining between religions and moralities. If there be truth in that modern conception, historical continuity, a knowledge of the relationships historically is one essential element in the study of the relationship here among ourselves. Fortunately delay in acquiring such a series of studies is no longer necessary, since it is now possible both to find satisfactory working definitions of religion and of morals and to obtain with little difficulty the necessary data relative to conditions and life among peoples on all the continents and often relative to peoples of long ago. It is hoped that this examination of the relation of religion and morals among the Iroquois will initiate such a series of studies.

Such an investigation, to be of value, first must determine the nature and amount of evidence that is at hand, and secondly must acquaint itself with the setting in which Iroquois religion and morals functioned, that is, with the kind of country the Iroquois lived in, the kind of life they led, and the ways in which they controlled themselves. Upon such a basis a study of value can be made of the Iroquois religion, the changes in it that occurred since the advent of the Whites, and their moral life as touched by religion and as independent of it.

THE EVIDENCE.

The life of the Iroquois before the sixteenth century is known only in so far as it can be inferred from his myths, language, practices and beliefs of recent times. These, in later centuries, have been recorded more or less accurately and completely by both Indians and Whites. In the second quarter of the sixteenth century Jacques Cartier, in the memoir of his explorations, described a visit to an Indian community that probably was Iroquoian. Almost three-quarters of a century

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