68 PRE-ANIMISM 



allay hunger and to beget and protect offspring are dominant 

 and permanent instincts shared by man in common with 

 animals. And as self-preservation was possible to the indi- 

 vidual only by union with his fellow-men, the group acted 

 together as one man in the communal life-struggle. " The 

 fertility of the earth and the fertility of the tribe, these two are 

 felt in early religion." 1 Common instincts and needs secured 

 collective action, the nature of which was determined by the 

 group in forbidding whatever hindered, and fostering what- 

 ever helped, the common weal. Hence the origin of certain 

 lines of conduct and customs in which were the germs of 

 morals ; hence, too, the origin of a collective behaviour before 

 unknown powers in which was the germ of religion. 2 



1 Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 43. 



2 Warde Fowler says, and this applies, a fortiori, to earlier groups, " the 

 ancient village community had, we may be quite sure, a common worship" 

 (The City State of the Greeks and Romans, p. 33). "It was the strength of 

 the old Roman Paganism that it brought religion into closest intimacy with 

 daily work, that its most popular and effective gods were gods of the hearth, 

 the market-place, and the harvest field. How alien from all that is the 

 Christian principle of keeping one's self unspotted from the world and 

 making religion a Sunday affair" (H. Sturt, Idea of a Free Church, p. 255). 



