Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/608

604 and resigning oneself to an outside power, whether that power be God or the church. The function of religion in this aspect is that of a sustainer, and religion loses its usefulness wholly if the individual, as is often the case, feels it his duty to sustain his religion. His religion must sustain him. Clubs, societies, fraternities of all kinds, exercise a similar function. The great charm of all fraternal societies is that they relieve the stress, the burden, the tension of the individual and shift the responsibility upon the society as a whole. The society is back of him, to some extent will do his thinking for him, decide moral questions for him, relieve his worry.

Just as man has physically lifted himself from the earth, overcoming gravity, so mentally he has raised himself above the other animals by the fatiguing exertion of his higher mental powers. The first animals were marine animals. They floated in or upon the water without effort. Then came creeping land animals prone upon the ground but not so completely supported as in the water. Gradually the animal lifted himself upon four legs and at last, by infinite labor, erect upon two, and the tension is correspondingly great. The horse rests very comfortably upon his four legs if allowed to stand and needs to lie down scarcely an hour in the twenty-four. Man sustains himself with constant effort in an erect position and must sit much of the time on a chair and at night reverts to the original position of the worm, prone upon the bed. This illustrates the whole theory of relaxation. It is always some form of reversion to primitive attitudes or primitive psychoses and it brings rest and peace and harmony.

The rhythm of moral and social progress probably follows the same law. Periods of rapid progress are followed by periods of rest and relaxation. From time to time we are shocked by waves of vice and epidemics of immorality. We hear suddenly of conditions of astonishing laxity of morals in the small towns of our western states which are supposed to be models of propriety and we say that the world is going to the bad. But our judgment is too hasty. These things are stages really in progress. What we witness is a kind of moral relaxation, a relapse to more primitive conditions, as a result probably of progress that is too rapid, of tension too great. Something like moral fatigue takes place and a reaction follows.

Just at present we are hearing it said that our country has gone "amusement mad." Well, our manner of life has been very strenuous. The tension has been high. Something was bound to happen. Other forms of relaxation have failed us just when we needed them most—particularly art and religion. We are told that the art of ancient Greece was the product of the Greek genius. Perhaps it was the cause of it. Both art and religion entered intimately into the daily life of the Greeks. They have departed from ours.