The distinction between the mechanical and the spiritual is familiar to us in our dealings with our fellow-men. In such dealings we may employ physical force. On the other hand, we may appeal to their intelligence and their emotions, and thus influence their action. In so far as we do not make such an appeal, we deal with our fellows, not as though they belonged to our social environment, but to our physical. At the lowest stages of his development, man does not distinguish clearly between persons and things. This means that he cannot distinguish clearly between his material environment and his social. But the distinction becomes gradually clearer, and it is, in the end, a marked one. Religion becomes differentiated from magic. To confound religion, in its higher developments, with magic is an inexcusable confusion. 74. RELIGION AND THE COMMUNITY.--The denotation of the term religion is a broad one, and there will probably always be dispute as to the justice of its extension to this or to that particular form of faith. But it seems clear that it is typical of religion to extend what may not unjustly be called the social environment of man. Will is recognized other than the wills of the human beings constituting the community. To the part played by such wills a very great prominence may be given. States may be theocratic, as among the ancient Hebrews; or church and state may share the dominion, or struggle between themselves for the supremacy, as in Europe in the Middle Ages; or the state may be theoretically supreme in authority and yet maintain and lend authority to a church. Even where church and state are, in theory, quite divorced--a modern conception--the church with its ordinances and prescriptions, its sacred days, its ceremonial, its educational institutions, remains a very significant factor in the social environment of man. Religious duties have at all times and in all sorts of societies been regarded as constituting an important aspect of conduct. They color strongly the _mores_ of the community. Whole codes of morals may be referred to the teachings of certain religious leaders. They claim their authority on religious grounds. The great significance of the role played by religion in the sphere of morals is impressed upon one who glances over the works of those writers who have approached the subject of ethics from the side of anthropology or sociology. A review of the facts has even tempted one of the most learned to seek the origin of morals almost wholly in religion. [Footnote: WUNDT, _Ethics_, Vol. I. "The Facts of the Moral Life"; see chapters ii and iii. English Translation, London, 1897.]