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enables him to gratify his sexual instincts without incurring the 

 associated responsibilities. It is no answer to this indictment to 

 say that the highest philosophy is not hostile to religion, but 

 often becomes its ally. We have to do with the arguments that 

 present themselves to the minds of average men and, but for 

 conscience which is ultra-rational, would sway them towards 

 conduct such as must disintegrate society. It is true that, as 

 evolution proceeds, the tendency to mutiny against social re- 

 straints grows weaker. Though vice and dishonesty may often 

 prosper, yet the set of the tide is against them. Though there 

 is no instant elimination for irregularities as among the lower 

 animals, yet the old process is still working : those unfitted for 

 life in civilised communities tend eventually to disappear. The 

 persons who are the parents of the next generation are mainly 

 of a different stamp. They are those in whom conscience and 

 religious principle check the vagaries of reason. Putting the 

 matter in popular language we may say that human cleverness 

 enables selfishness to find endless ways of gratifying itself 

 without paying any immediate penalty beyond that of degrada- 

 tion of character, and that religion alone can check the ruinous 

 tendency. Thus religion binds man with laws from which he 

 can only with difficulty free himself and so is the cement of 

 society. Reason is the disintegrator, wrong-headed, short- 

 sighted reason it must be owned, but still reason, the crude 

 philosophy of the man who knows how to gratify his appetites, 

 but knows little beyond this, and who makes what little power 

 of ratiocination he has subserve his appetites. This is not a 

 very noble part for human reason, the much belauded, to play. 

 But she sometimes finds a nobler role. Religion often tends to 

 become an over-elaborated framework of doctrine and ceremony, 

 obscuring what is really essential. In such cases reason, armed 

 with the facts of experience, may interfere has sometimes 

 interfered and allying herself with all that is true and essential 

 in religion has waged war successfully against what is un- 

 essential. To this we may attribute the reform of the taboo 

 system as well as more recent reforms with the history of which 

 the world is familiar. 



