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THE FUNCTION OP RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION. 189 in like manner excluded themselves. I need but to mention the monastic orders in the Christian Church and in other religious bodies as examples of the widespread tendency to separation from active life as an expression of religious thought. We find also that amongst large bodies of religious men habits of temporary seclusion have been established ; habits which differ from prolonged seclusion in their repul- siveness and disadvantage only in degree. And finally when we come to the consideration of the perfectly normal religious habits of perfectly well-balanced people, of men and women of the very highest and noblest type, we find them with- drawing themselves upon occasion from the distracting stimuli of the world and giving themselves up to higher reflexion and thoughtful self-examination. In cases where men removed from the normal environment receive thus what they feel to be inspirations, these messages are evidently not likely to be related to individualistic reac- tions, which in seclusion are not often called for ; but are much more likely to be related to those impulses of a social nature which cannot become forcible so long as immediate response to stimuli from the environment is demanded. If this be granted, then it seems to me not at all difficult to comprehend the emphasis in the race of the habits we are considering ; most natural to find, as we do, that voluntary seclusion from the world has been emphasised in the habits of religious teachers from the earliest days of history. 4. Fasting as an expression of religious feeling naturally comes before us for consideration at this point, because it has been, and is still, so closely connected with the habits of seclusion that we have just been studying. Indeed, fasting was almost necessarily connected with involuntary separa- tion from the world in the desert ; and quite naturally accompanied that seclusion which was undertaken volun- tarily. It is easy then to account for the origin upon occasion of habits of fasting, and we can conceive also how these habits, although arising in connexion with seclusion, might come occasionally to be followed apart from seclusion. But it is difficult, on the other hand, on any theory which implies that fasting was originally undertaken to satisfy individual- istic longings, to understand the persistence of these habits ; yet such persistence in the past through many ages is implied in the very existence of an instinct, the expression of which tends to develop naturally in a large part of the race, as we shall presently see is the case with fasting.