EVOLUTION AND THE HIGHER HUMAN LIFE 305 



being endowed with full consciousness any more than it 

 is passively tolerated by a lower animal which instinc- 

 tively struggles with its foes until death. So the desire 

 to continue alive the '^ will to live'^ is a natural in- 

 stinct, which combines wdth the belief in persistent dis- 

 embodied spirits and, no doubt, with many other ele- 

 ments, to develop the basic conception of some kind of 

 an immortal existence. 



The third element, human responsibility to the infinite 

 personality, is variously recorded in lower and higher 

 religions. Its conception grows partly out of the feel- 

 ings of awe and terror inspired by great works of nature 

 such as the thunder-storm, the cyclone, and the volcano, 

 while the orderly and regular workings of even everyday 

 nature seem to demonstrate the direct control of the 

 powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his crops 

 destroyed by a tempest or drought ; he attributes the 

 disaster to the particular powers concerned with such 

 things whom he must have angered unwittingly, and 

 whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. 

 His individual and tribal acts do not always accomphsh 

 the desired ends, and again the laws of infinite and ulti- 

 mate powers must have been contravened, as he inter- 

 prets the situation. Therefore his whole rehgious con- 

 sciousness was exerted in the direction of finding out 

 what was the ultimate constitution of nature, with 

 which human activities must harmonize if they are to be 

 successful. Bound by custom and convention and bio- 

 logical law, he looks about wonderingly to find the exter- 

 nal authority for his bonds. To his mind this authority 

 must be the host of spirits and gods who had made him 

 and the things of his world. It is in this way that so many 



