BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 45 



ance of conditions which bear hardly on themselves. 

 It needs the tremendous force of supernatural sanction, 

 it needs the sharp antithesis between fleeting temporal 

 advantage and eternal spiritual gain, to bring the indi- 

 vidual to acquiesce in conditions which his reason tells 

 him are opposed to his interests on this earth. 



Anthropology shows us how in primitive peoples 

 religious sanctions are invoked to enforce obedience to 

 all the complicated laws and customs of savage life 

 laws and customs, often grotesque in themselves, yet, 

 taken as a whole, necessary for social survival in the 

 existing conditions of savage life. Down through the 

 ages we see the promise of some ultimate religious 

 reward or punishment invoked to send the warrior 

 inspirited to battle, to bind the members of a tribe or 

 nation into an effective whole, and to hold together the 

 units of a family, while, at all events, the young need 

 parental support for their proper development. Races 

 which know how to use these means of strength have 

 inevitably supplanted those without them ; thus the 

 religious instinct, in helping those in whom it is her- 

 editary, itself spreads through mankind. 



There are various ways in which this influence makes 

 itself felt. In certain civilizations, we have the frame 

 of mind, or possibly the intuitive scientific insight, that 

 seeks to sustain the family by the doctrine of the re- 

 incarnation of spirits or by emphasizing the continuity 

 of ties with the departed ancestors, whose spirits will 

 become angry or perish of neglect, should their stock 

 fail. They believe that the departed will be keenly 

 conscious of and will be able to assist in the efforts of 

 their posterity. In the late Russian-Japanese war, one 



