All ideals of personality are derived from intercourse, and all that attain any general acceptance have a social organization and history. Each historical epoch or nation has its somewhat distinctive personal ideals, which are instilled into the individual from the general store of thought. It is especially true that the persons of religion have this character. They are communal and cumulative, are gradually built up and become in some degree an institution. In this way they may acquire richness, clearness, sanctity, and authority, and may finally be inculcated as something above and outside of the human mind. The latter is certain to happen if they are made the basis of a discipline to be applied to all sorts of people. The dogma that they are extra-human serves, like the forms and ceremonies of a court, to secure to them the prestige of distance and inaccessibility. It is a chief function of religious organization to make the moral synthesis more readily attainable, by establishing a spiritual discipline, or system of influences and principles, which shall constantly stimulate one’s higher sentiments, and furnish a sort of outline or scaffolding of suggestions to aid him in organizing his thought. In doing this its main agent is the inculcation of personal ideals, although the teaching of creeds is also, perhaps, important to the same purpose. It is apparently part of the legitimate function of organized moral thought to enter the vaguer fields of speculation about conduct and inculcate provisional ideas, relating for instance to the origin and meaning of life—matters which the mind must and will explore, with or without a guide. To have suggested to them definite ways of thinking regarding such matters helps to make mental unity possible, and to save men from the aimless and distracting wanderings that often end in despair. Of course these ideas must be in harmony with the general state of thought, consistent, for example, with the established results of science. Otherwise they only increase the distraction. But a _credible creed_ is an excellent thing, and the lack of it is a real moral deficiency.