210 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



system of powers operating in events. These powers 

 (to use a general, and what is intended to be a non- 

 committal, term) are in constant action upon man's 

 life. There is a power in the sun, a power in the 

 storm, in the growth of crops, in wild beasts, in 

 strange tribes, in the unrealized recesses of man's 

 own heart; and in the course of his life man is 

 brought into contact with these powers, which may 

 act with him or against him. Man frames his own 

 idea of these powers; and once that idea is framed, 

 it exerts an effect upon the rest of his ideas, upon his 

 emotions, upon his conduct. The more strongly the 

 idea is held, the greater the effect. 



But the idea may obviously be held and organized 

 in many different ways. It is when the idea is or- 

 ganized in one particular way that we call it religious. 

 We call it religious when on the one hand it involves 

 some recognition of powers operating so as to under- 

 lie the general operations of the world; and,, on the 

 other hand, when it involves the emotions. It must 

 involve the idea of the general powers operating in 

 the outer world; so that an emotional reaction en- 

 tirely limited to a single human being, or to beauty, 

 or to a single event, is not religious. And it must 

 involve the emotional nature of man, so that a 

 purely intellectual investigation of the powers in 

 operation, or a purely practical response, a purely 

 moral reaction to them, is again not religious. 



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In primitive societies, as the studies of a Frazer 



