294 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



interest for the common welfare. But it must not be imagined 

 that this argument is used by religion or even by morality. 

 Religion speaks of certain things as wrong, as bad in them- 

 selves, and of certain other things as good, quite apart from 

 ulterior consequences. An ideal of right is thus set up, to be 

 aimed at without thought of gain personal or national. But 

 this ideal will be found to be identical with what in the long 

 run is the interest of the nation. Conscience, it has been said, 

 is the tribal self. The good man drops his own self and 

 identifies himself, unconsciously, with the community. 



Before concluding this division of the subject, I shall try to 

 meet another objection that is likely to be raised. If the office 

 of religion is to save the tribe or nation from disintegration, if 

 that is its sole function, why does it appear in so sublime a 

 form ? If all that is required is the production of honesty 

 sufficient to save the nation from defeat and extermination, is 

 not the phenomenon altogether too great and noble to result 

 from such a requirement ? But mere business honesty when 

 spread over the mass or even a large percentage of a people is 

 a very grand thing. It is no use trying to belittle it. This, 

 however, cannot exist unless something much higher exists in 

 the leaders of the nation, those who are to it 



" The glass of fashion and the mould of form." 



No nation in the matter of honesty forms a flat elevated plateau. 

 There must be pre-eminent peaks or else the general level 

 will be miserably low. And, therefore, in the struggle between 

 tribe and tribe, victory would often lie with that one which had 

 among its members some spirit of the highest order who could 

 raise the general tone of morality among his fellow tribesmen. 

 Religion in its highest manifestation is seldom above what is 

 required to lift the inert mass to the level that the actual needs 

 of a nation demand. 



