The Law is at first the Myth applied. Its object is as much to propitiate the gods as to preserve social order. It is absolute because it is inspired. Many of its ordinances as drawn from the myth are inapplicable to man, and are unjust or frivolous. Yet such as it is, it rules the conduct of the commonwealth and expresses the ideal of its perfected condition. All the oldest codes of laws are religious, and are alleged revelations. The Pentateuch, the Avesta, the Laws of Manu, the Twelve Tables, the Laws of Seleucus, all carry the endorsement, “And God said.” Their real intention is to teach the relation of man to God, rather than the relations of man to man. On practical points--on the rights of property, on succession and wills, on contracts, on the adoption of neighbors, and on the treatment of enemies--they often violate the plainest dictates of natural justice, of common humanity, even of family affection. Their precepts are frequently frivolous, sometimes grossly immoral. But if these laws are compared with the earliest myths and cults, and the opinions then entertained of the gods, and how to propitiate them, it becomes easy to see how the precepts of the law flowed from these inchoate imaginings of the religious sentiment.[249-1] The improvement of civil statutes did not come through religion. Experience, observation and free thought taught man justice, and his kindlier emotions were educated by the desire to cherish and preserve which arose from family and social ties. As these came to be recognized as necessary relations of society, religion appropriated them, incorporated them into her ideal, and even claimed them as her revelations. History largely invalidates this claim. The moral progress of mankind has been mainly apart from dogmatic teachings, often in conflict with them. An established rule of faith may enforce obedience to its statutes, but can never develop morals. “True virtue is independent of every religion, and incompatible with any which is accepted on authority.”[249-2] Yet thinkers, even the best of them, appear to have had difficulty in discerning any nobler arena for the religious sentiment than the social one. “Religion,” says Matthew Arnold, “is conduct.” It is the power “which makes for righteousness.” “As civil law,” said Voltaire, “enforces morality in public, so the use of religion is to compel it in private life.” “A complete morality,” observes a contemporary Christian writer, “meets all the practical ends of religion.”[250-1] In such expressions man’s social relations, his duty to his neighbor, are taken to exhaust religion. It is still the idea of the commonwealth, the religion of morality, the submission to a law recognized as divine. Whether the law is a code of ethics, the decision of a general council, or the ten commandments, it is alike held to be written by the finger of God, and imperative. Good works are the demands of such religion.