230 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



pleasures as involving sin ; for it will be realized 

 that too much of the present attitude is due to the 

 projection of our own conflicts and complexes, our 

 own pruriences and pruderies, into what might be 

 innocent and joyous. But this merits a fuller dis- 

 cussion than we can here allot. 



Again, if I had space at my disposal, I would write 

 of the changes in the position and constitution of 

 religion brought about by changes other than those 

 in religious beliefs themselves. Most important, of 

 course, are the spread of education on the one hand, 

 and the spread of the facilities for the most varied 

 spiritual enjoyment on the other. If the people 

 is educated to a point at which it can judge for itself, 

 it wants no special priests or clerical mediators ; 

 its mediators are those who are specially fitted to 

 unravel the intellectual, emotional, and moral diffi- 

 culties of its own day and for all time — poets, philo- 

 sophers, and men of science. The spread of facilities 

 for reading, for seeing plays and works of art, and 

 hearing good music, means of course that, whereas 

 in ruder epochs the Church provided the principal 

 way of psychological sublimation, now sublimation 

 and spiritual refreshment can be achieved equally 

 or more effectively (and every whit as religiously) 

 without ever frequenting a ' place of worship ' or 

 belonging to any denomination. This tendency to- 

 wards fluidity and plasticity, towards many possibilities 

 of sublimation instead of one, may by some be 



