Note 10 — Chapter V · ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMICS

Almost every society, however, had its tutelary divinity, “in the same way as at the present day similar associations on the continent of Europe”—as in England before the Reformation—“invoke the name of a patron saint; and their meetings were sometimes called by a name which was afterwards consecrated to Christian uses—that of a ‘sacred synod.’”10 In many of them “religion was, beyond this, the basis and bond of union.... Then, as now, many men had two religions, that which they professed and that which they believed; for the former there were temples and State officials and public sacrifices; for the latter there were associations; and in these associations, as is shown from extant inscriptions, divinities whom the State ignored had their priests, their chapels, and their ritual.”11