Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/553

HENRY R. MARSHALL, Instinct and Reason. 539 before I dwell further on this conception of Eeligion, I would fain wind up my polemic against Mr. Marshall's general methodological position. So long as we are dealing with the more definite and invariable instincts of man, notably with his individualistic and sexual instincts, the suggestive analogy of stimulus and cell- reaction serves well enough as a logical base of operations. As we move forward, however, to ever more complex and inconstant social tendencies, the light shed by the analogy grows steadily fainter. Finally, when we arrive at forces like Eeason and Eeligion that stand apart from, and above, the specific instincts, and supply pure " emphasis " to tendencies already of their own right active, "Parallelism" seems played out, and we yearn for a new and opposite analogy Mr. William James' notion of con- sciousness "loading the dice," or something even more explicitly "rationalistic" in phrase and import. No wonder then that the writer's consistency breaks down ; that we are startled by homely turns of expression that will not conform to the formal demands of the argument (for example, when " common sense " is said to refuse to listen to "reason" when it tries to part young lovers); that we are surprised though delighted to find 500 pages of the most ingenious 'reasoning' for surely it is that, or would be that lead straight to the conclusion (printed in capitals) " Be religious ". The fact is that here at the entrance of the stronghold of Mind there be locks a many needing as many keys to fit them. To dream of a skeleton-key that shall open them all is pardonable enough. To forge and apply one with reckless intent in the present state of our knowledge is philosophic house-breaking. There remains a word to be said concerning Mr. Marshall's conception of Religion on its anthropological side. That he is no expert in matters anthropological is plain from the preface itself, where he terms the study of the genesis of religious customs and beliefs " a field which has perhaps been already sufficiently ex- plored ". It is a pity, then, that (despite a professed ignorance of Origins) he should dispute with "Tyler" (sic, as also in the Appendix) as to the " origin " of fasting, theorise about the way in which " the act of circumcision may have been at first per- formed," and so on. As to his main doctrine, that Religion is a sort of withdrawal of self from individualistic influences, so that the " voice " of conscience may make itself heard, he ought either to have given at least some passing consideration to Mr. Tylor's weightily delivered judgment, that "the connexion be- tween Morality and Religion is secondary and late " ; or else, if he prefer to set up Validity against Origin, and argue from what Religion has become, let him abstain from fancy sketches of primi- tive religion with its " established phallic church " and the rest. There may be something, of course (though personally I doubt it), in the view that the hallucinations of the savage medicine-man are prone to take an ethical turn. Such a view, combining as it does the two more or less disparate halves of Mr. Lang's latest anthro-