BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 53 



religion which aspires to command universal acceptance 

 or infallible knowledge. 



It is largely on account of these difficulties and of 

 the ill-feeling and want of comprehension engendered 

 by them, that, in Christian countries, we have to watch 

 a growing tendency to separate training as part of the 

 process of upbringing from religious education, which 

 is the true agent formative of character likely to have 

 some biological significance. One has only to note the 

 contents of the halfpenny papers and penny novelettes 

 devoured as their principal intellectual food, by the 

 majority of the population, to see how far a knowledge 

 of reading may lead a man from that communion with 

 the great minds of all times, the possibility of which 

 was the original justification for a literary training. 



Unless the upbringing of each generation be 

 associated actively in some effective way with the pre- 

 valent religion and morality, it is difficult to see how 

 either can have any real biological significance or true 

 selective value. As we said before, at all stages of 

 social evolution, the interests of the individual tend 

 to clash with those of the race ; and it is only a 

 supernatural sanction for unselfish conduct, such as will 

 not be obtained in any technical institute, that has been 

 found strong enough to influence the mass of mankind 

 against the pursuit of mere temporal advantage. 



That the Christian religion in some of its mani- 

 festations has a definite survival value, we see from the 

 maintenance of the birth-rate among the devout Roman 

 Catholic peasantry of Brittany and the industrial Irish 

 Catholic populations of our large towns. The fact too 

 that the birth-rate has fallen less among the Protestant 



