(I found a paragraph I copied on 2/21/2003, but I don't remember where I got it.)

In every one of the mythological systems that in the long course of history and prehistory have been propagated in the various zones and quarters of this earth, these two fundamental realizations--of the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order--have been combined symbolically and constitute the nuclear structuring force of the rites and, thereby, the society.