210 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



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 

 organized in one particular way that we call it re- 

 ligious. We call it religious when on the one hand 

 it involves some recognition of powers operating so 

 as to underlie 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 

 entirely 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. 



^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 



In primitive societies, as the studies of a Frazer 

 or a Rivers have shown us, the whole of life is en- 

 meshed with religion, and there is scarcely an activity 



