ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the assumption that social creeds, law, economics, and so on have no meaning whatever apart from the organization to which they are attached. It discusses the psychology of social institutions which produces similar results regardless of the form into which the statement of the creed is cast. Smaller social organizations functioning within the general national structure resemble, in so far as their purpose permits, the larger organizations. Mythologies which support creeds are distinguished from institutional habits by no sharp definition. In an institution where the creed is thought to represent truth and is supposed to describe what the organization does, as in government or law, the factors as habits and attitudes are generally ignored. Thus the powerful influence of the national hierarchy of gods moves institutions into patterns from which they cannot escape until the attitudes change.
