Magic Science and Religion 59 



is made to receive his religious comfort. The saving belief in 

 spiritual continuity after death is already contained in the individual 

 mind ; it is not created by society. The sum-total of innate 

 tendencies, known usually as " the instinct of self-preservation," 

 is at the root of this belief. The faith in immortality is, as we 

 have seen, closely connected with the difficulty of facing one's 

 own annihilation or that of a near and beloved person. This 

 tendency makes the idea of the final disappearance of human 

 personality odious, intolerable, socially destructive. Yet this idea 

 and the fear of it always lurk in individual experience, and 

 religion can remove it only by its negation in ritual. 



Whether this is achieved by a Providence directly guiding 

 human history, or by a process of natural selection in which a 

 culture which evolves a belief and a ritual of immortality will 

 survive and spread — this is a problem of theology or metaphysics. 

 The anthropologist has done enough when he has shown the value 

 of a certain phenomenon for social integrity and for the continuity 

 of culture. In any case we see that what religion does in this 

 matter is to select one out of the two alternatives suggested to man 

 by his instinctive endowment. 



This selection once made, however, society is indispensable 

 for its enactment. The bereaved member of the group, himself 

 overwhelmed by sorrow and fear, is incapable of relying on his 

 own forces. He would be unable by his single effort to apply the 

 dogma to his own case. Here the group steps in. 7 he other 

 members, untouched by the calamity, not torn mentally by the 

 metaphysical dilemma, can respond to the crisis along the lines 

 dictated by the religious order. Thus they bring consolation to 

 the stricken one and lead him through the comforting experiences 

 of religious ceremony. It is always easy to bear the misfortunes — of 

 others, and the whole group, in which the majority are untouched 

 by the pangs of fear and horror, can thus help the afflicted minority. 

 Going through the religious ceremonies, the bereaved emerges 

 changed by the revelation of immortality, communion with the 

 beloved, the order of the next world. Religion commands in acts 

 of cult, the group executes the command. 



But, as we have seen, the comfort of ritual is not artificial, not 

 manufactured for the occasion. It is but the result of the two 

 conflicting tendencies which exist in man's innate emotional 

 reaction to death.: the religious attitude consists merely in the 



