Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/198

III. THE FUNCTION OF RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION. BY HENRY EUTGEBS MARSHALL. 1. In the article that has preceded this, as the reader will remember, we found ourselves led to the conclusion that there are many influences in our complex social life which, if unrestrained, tend to produce an over-emphasis of variance from typical forms of action, and to subvert the order of instinct efficiency which has been formed in us and which we judge must be of value to our race in its struggle for supremacy. This suggested to us that there might be developed within us a governing instinct functioinng to prevent this over-emphasis and this subversion, and led us to look for some signs of the existence of such a governing instinct. In the very beginning of this search the fact was forced upon us that some of the most characteristic activities con- nected with the expression of our religious feelings must tend to produce the very results that our governing instinct if existent would itself tend to produce. This in turn led us to ask whether religious activities are to be classed as in- stinctive ; and finding evidence that they must probably be so classed and remembering that all instincts have biological functions, the hypothesis naturally suggested itself that the function of the activities expressive of the religious instinct is to emphasise within us instinct in general and to sub- ordinate variance ; to strengthen the instincts of wider im- port and to subordinate those that are less wide in their influence although occasionally more powerfully developed ; to establish a certain order of impulse efficiency which if effective will bring those instincts that are of individualistic import into subjection, under certain conditions, to those that function in relation to the persistence of the species ; and to bring both of these classes of instincts, in general, into subjection to the instincts that have social import. This hypothesis must be judged by a study of the effects