280 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



ism, together with the other tendency to project ideas 

 properly attaching to the subjective world into ex- 

 ternal objects and processes — these between them ac- 

 count for much of the modes of expression so far 

 found for religious belief; and, since the majority of 

 human beings have a profound distaste for sustained 

 or difficult thought, it is likely that they will continue 

 to account for much in the future. 



These are facts of extreme importance. The pro- 

 fessional sceptic is at once tempted to exclaim that 

 every such projection and illogical symbolism is illu- 

 sion through and through, and must be wholly swept 

 aside. He would be wrong. We each of us must 

 know from our own experience the "influence" (to 

 use a general term) which may inhere in certain 

 things and places. True that the influence is of our 

 own mind's making; but it is none the less real, not 

 only as a momentary existence, but, as the term im- 

 plies, as exerting a definite and often a great effect 

 upon our lives. The lover who cherishes a ring or 

 a lock of hair; the man who is drawn back to the 

 haunts of his childhood or his youth; the mind re- 

 freshing itself with some loved poem or picture; — 

 what do we have in these and innumerable other 

 instances but a peculiarity of mind whereby it may 

 take external objects into itself and invest them with 

 its own emotions and ideas, in such a way that those 

 same objects may later reflect their stored-up emo- 

 tion back again into the mind? It operates by a 

 form of association; but the actual working resembles 



