in it any coöperation distinct from the natural connection of things, and his reason is the only point of immediate contact with it. Religion(418) itself Aristotle treats as an unconditional moral necessity. The man who doubts whether the gods should be honoured is a subject fit not for instruction but for punishment, just as the man who asks whether he should love his parents. As the natural system of the world cannot be imagined without God, so neither can man in it be imagined without religion. But he can give us no other ground save political expediency for resting religion upon fables so apparent as the stories of the popular belief. He sometimes himself uses these fables, like other popular opinions, to illustrate some general proposition, as, for instance, Homer’s verses on the golden chain show the immobility of the first mover: just as in other cases he likes to pursue his scientific assumptions to their least apparent beginnings, and to take account of sayings and proverbs. But if we except the few general principles of religious belief, he ascribes to these fables no deeper meaning, and as little does he seem to care about purifying their character. For his state he presupposes the existing religion, as in his personal conduct he did not withdraw from its usages, and expressed his attachment to friends and relations in the forms consecrated by it. But no trace is found in him of Plato’s desire to reform religion by means of philosophy: and in his politics he allows in the existing worship even what in itself he disapproves, as the case of unseemly words, inscriptions, and statues. Thus the relation of the Aristotelic philosophy to the actual religion is generally a very loose one. It does not disdain indeed to use the points of connection which the other presents, but has no need of it whatever for itself: nor does it seek on its own side to purify and transform religion, the imperfection of which it rather seems to take as something unavoidable. The two are indifferent to each other; philosophy pursues its way without troubling itself about religion, without fearing any interruption from it.