BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 55 



which the progress of the race is assured to others. If, 

 however, the effect of this altruistic movement in 

 directing the attention of society to the condition of 

 the unsuccessful and unhealthy be to discourage and 

 hamper the families of the able and robust, no further 

 racial progress is possible, and degeneration will set in. 

 The duty of self-elimination is not a doctrine that can 

 be preached indifferently to all sections of a community. 

 There arises at times a certain type of religion con- 

 sciously aspiring to influence and direct social effort 

 towards the alleviation of social inequalities rather than 

 ministering to each individual according to his needs. 

 If such a religion has no mission of encouragement for 

 the successful members of the community in all classes, 

 and fixes its attention exclusively on the failures of 

 humanity, devoting its strength to mitigating their lot 

 so as to increase the probability of their racial survival, 

 it is necessarily a source of weakness to the people 

 who have adopted it. Moreover, it can never hope 

 to maintain its hold on the able classes in whom the 

 intellectual and administrative capacity of the nation 

 is chiefly to be found, and by whom the nation is 

 principally maintained and directed. Not only is its 

 teaching clearly unsuited to their requirements, but 

 its method of procedure is directly at variance with 

 the continued successful existence of the people which 

 permits the propaganda. Thus the wave of antagonism 

 to this particular type of religious endeavour may 

 be a sound biological reaction against an insidious 

 form of threatened annihilation. At any rate the 

 possibility of a connection between the two is worth 

 investigating. 



