to study them, the Babylonian litanies and hymns seem rarely to reflect the religious side of the family life[134.1]; they are prompted by the needs of the city and the empire, or by the emotional crises of the individual soul. The legal contracts preserved on the brick tablets throw some light on the forms of the marriage ceremony, which appears to have been performed usually in a registration-office rather than a church. There must surely have been also some religious side to it; but the only evidence, so far as I am aware, is a very curious and doubtful document that has been published by Dr. Pinches, containing details of a religious ceremony which appears to be part of a bridal.[134.2] I will not quote the quaint and bizarre formulae, as the renderings are said to be highly conjectural: if they prove correct, one may judge that the service belongs to a highly advanced religion; but I cannot adduce any parallel to it from other peoples. As for the ritual or religious feeling connected with adoption or birth, I am not aware that the documents have so far disclosed anything: it is stated vaguely by Peiser, in his sketch of Babylonian society, that adoption at Babylon might be prompted by a religious motive, namely, by the desire of the childless parents to have an heir who might continue the ancestor-worship of the family. But no document is quoted in proof of this; and it is very doubtful if we ought to speak of Babylonian ancestor-worship.[134.3] We may suspect that the writer has been misled by the {135} well-known facts of Vedic, Hellenic, and Roman family cult. In this, as in other respects, we may feel how advanced, modern and secular, was Babylonian society. No trace has appeared as yet of the tribal or phratric system; the family is the unit of the State, but individualism is much developed. On the other hand, the function of religion as a constructive force in early Greek society, in the evolution of tribal and intertribal law, is more obvious and transparent, for in this land we are fortunate enough to catch glimpses of civilised society in its making, which are denied to us in Mesopotamia. Hellenic religion penetrated every domain and department of Hellenic life to an even greater degree than did Babylonian religion the society of Babylon. And yet the Greek mind as it develops becomes pronouncedly secular, at least in comparison with the Oriental. The contradiction is only apparent. The Hellene used religion as an instrument for constructing his social order, for utilitarian ends, as a serviceable minister that could rarely, and never for long, establish a tyranny. He even used it to assist and glorify his sports, yet he varied and arranged these according to his pleasure. The detrimental tendency of religion to petrify custom was less marked in his midst than elsewhere; as usual, it often lagged behind in the progress of the race, yet it followed the progress on the whole, and often assisted it.