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 THE FUNCTION OF EELIGIOUS EXPRESSION. 201 kindle within the souls of his hearers ; he calls to their attention impulses which they recognise as their own when he tells of them, impulses however which they would not have perceived had he not spoken to them. 11. If the preceding argument has appealed to my reader he will agree that the function of religion which lies back of its ceremonial is the suppression of the force of individualistic, elemental impulses in favour of those which have higher significance. But we have seen in what has preceded this that the latest elaboration of the tendency to elemental variance is what we know as Reason. And it is equally clear I think that in self-restraint and individualistic suppression, in the cry for aid and guidance, we gain that complex psychic state which we know under the name of Faith. It would appear then that in relation to our modern complex and self-conscious intellectual life the function of religion will lie to a great extent in the restraint of Reason and its sub- ordination to Faith. It is most natural then to find that religious leaders in all later times have emphasised this teaching. Especially in the teaching of the Christian Church do we find ever recurrent this dictum that reason must be subordinated to faith. 12. Here our argument must rest. In what has pre- ceded this I have written with no desire to make thorough- going explanations, iri conformity with the notions of modern science, of the religious experiences of the past and of those that influence us in our day. So far as such explanations are possible and desirable they have been presented more fully and more ably than I could hope to perform any similar work even if I wished to attempt it. What I have been concerned to suggest is a reply to the question which forces itself upon our notice. If Religion be an instinct which has been acquired by the human race, what special function does it serve in the development of our race ? Although Nature in forming this religious instinct may have built it up (so to speak) out of habits formed for other purposes, using them as they served her higher end ; still it may well be claimed I think that these habits have to a great extent persisted not because of their original values, but on account of their worth to the race as means of emphasising the subordination of the variant individual principle to the racial principle ; of repressing the immediate