Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/71

 THE BELIGIOUS INSTINCT. 55 appropriate stimulus be given. And under such a criterion the instinctive nature of the religious force within us must surely be granted : for one will scarcely deny that civilised man has a natural aptitude towards religious functioning, which is brought out under the most unexpected circum- stances, upon the occurrence of the most subtle of stimuli. 17. Here I would beg my reader to note that the governing instinct, if it exist at all, must be one which would be appreciably developed in man only ; for we know of no race of animals in which the ethical impulses are highly developed, and none in which the tribal life is notice- ably dependent upon the subordination of other instincts to racial instincts, so far as the latter do exist in them. It is an interesting corroboration of our supposition, there- fore, to find that the religious activities are, so far as we know, developed in man only. It is true that certain attempts have been made to trace evidence of fetich worship in the higher animals ; but the actions observed are all explicable in terms of surprise and its resultant fear ; and as we shall see in the next article, although the arousal of fear may possibly have led in the beginning to the primal forms of religious expression, it can in no way have led to the persistence of the tendency to the appearance of religious expression in its many modified forms ; and this fact of persistence is after all the matter of highest importance in our consideration. But furthermore, not only do we find that religious expression is limited to man, but we discover, as we should expect, that it varies in correspondence to the changes in man's character; that it is developed in its most complex forms where man's tribal life is most complex. If religious activities be the expression of an instinct which has to do with the emphasis of impulses that are important for the development of social life, then surely we should expect just what we thus find viz., that its highest developments would appear in those races in which social consolidation is most advanced : it seems to me that the history of our race proves this fact. It is indeed true that religious inspiration, so called, has often been and is still gained in solitude, but the power of a religion is tested by its influence upon the social life of the community in which it is preached. If we refer to the history of ancient civilisations we find the complexity of their religious conceptions and expressions co-ordinate with the complexity of their social fabric.