[79] The reader will be able to understand, from the facts of this chapter, to what extent the individual was sacrificed to the family, as a religious body. From servant to master--up through all degrees of the household hierarchy--the law of duty was the same: obedience absolute to custom and tradition. The ancestral cult permitted no individual freedom: nobody could live according to his or her pleasure; every one had to live according to rule. The individual did not even have a legal existence;--the family was the unit of society. Even its patriarch existed in law as representative only, responsible both to the living and the dead. His public responsibility, however, was not determined merely by civil law. It was determined by another religious bond,--that of the ancestral cult of the clan or tribe; and this public form of ancestor-worship was even more exacting than the religion of the home. [80] [81] THE COMMUNAL CULT As by the religion of the household each individual was ruled in every action of domestic life, so, by the religion of the village or district the family was ruled in all its relations to the outer world. Like the religion of the home, the religion of the commune was ancestor-worship. What the household shrine represented to the family, the Shinto parish-temple represented to the community; and the deity there worshipped as tutelar god was called Ujigami, the god of the Uji, which term originally signified the patriarchal family or gens, as well as the family name.