Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/202

186 HENBY RUTGERS MARSHALL: actions of the preceding generation is due to an inborn trend and capacity, especially if the actions " imitated " appear to the individual to be disadvantageous to him or to his race, or are distasteful to him in any degree, directly or indirectly. In the case of the actions which we are about to study, not only do we find this persistence in wide groups of men but we find a common source acknowledged as the basis of the most varied types of actions ; and we find also, as I hope to show, a common trend of all to one special biological benefit, notwithstanding that marked disadvantage appears at the first glance to be connected with them all. 3. In what I have already written I have given so much prominence to the religious habits connected with voluntary seclusion from the stimuli of our complex life, that it is natural to begin our study with an examination of this form of religious expression. It will not require discussion to convince the reader that seclusion from the exciting stimuli of the world will tend to reduce those reactions upon our environment which deter- mine the expression of the individualistic instincts, and that seclusion will thus give play to the impulses which are of non-individualistic import. Seclusion involves a tendency to fixation of thought upon our inner springs of action, and when carried to extremes naturally tends to produce hallucination. The experience of man in the early stages of his development must have led to the observation that what we call hallucinatory voices or visions, but which he believed to emanate from higher powers, were often noticed by men during involuntary seclusion ; the voice had spoken, the vision had appeared, again and again to those who were alone in the desert, far removed from the distractions of normal life. Now to the man of undeveloped type these voices and visions must have been very impressive. In times of great danger or perplexity the guidance of these higher powers, as they were conceived, might be wished for ; and this might lead some individual to seclude himself voluntarily because he entertained the hope, which would be discovered in some cases to be well founded, that this mysterious guidance might thus be obtained. But here I would ask my reader to note an important point ; viz., that while we may thus account for the appearance of the habits of seclusion in individuals, on the other hand it is not at all easy on any such basis to account for the persistence of these habits in the race ; persistence which is implied in the fact that they have at length become