RELIGION AND SCIENCE 271 



In such a case sublimation occurs with the normal 

 object of the instinct. But the elasticity of man's 

 mind permits of further complication; the instinct 

 may be not only sublimated but attached to new ob- 

 jects. Through the cogs and spirals of the mind, 

 the sexual instinct may find an outlet at higher levels, 

 and contribute to the driving force of adventurous 

 living, of art, or as we may see in many mystics — St. 

 Teresa for example — of religious ecstasy. 



It is as if a swift stream were falling into under- 

 ground channels below the mill of our being, where 

 it could churn and roar away to waste. But some of 

 it is led off at a higher level, and we can learn to lead 

 off still more; and we can make an installation of 

 pipes whereby it can be taken up to the original level, 

 and made to fall through new machines and do any 

 work we may ask of it. 



The mechanism of sublimation, however, deserves 

 a few more words. Recent work in biology has 

 shown that in low forms of animals and in early 

 stages of high forms, the head-region is in a certain 

 sense dominant to the rest, in that it forms first and 

 independently; but that, once present, it exerts a 

 formative influence upon the rest of the body, keep- 

 ing the various organs in some way under control, 

 making them different from what they would other- 

 wise have been, and so moulding them to the part of 

 a single and higher whole. 



An extremely similar process is at work in sub- 

 limation. Ideas and ideals can be naturally domi- 



