Wherever a religious instinct appears it must be noted, for it is the voice of the spiritual nature clamouring for food necessary for its life and perfection. Wherever a religious instinct leads awrong, it is not that the instinct is wrong, but that it runs counter to or overrides correlative instincts. When man has pursued one instinct across and athwart other instincts, which it tramples down in its fanaticism, he fails through exaggeration.

Religious instincts resemble political instincts. Every form of government is based on a right principle, but where other and equally right principles have been overlooked, misery ensues. Political mistakes have their origin in a lack of knowledge. There were ten famines in France in one century; the country had bred soldiers, not farmers.

When a religious instinct produces error-that is, when religion becomes superstition, there is something wrong in its organization. There is an undue preponderance given to this truth, and there is a forgetfulness of that truth. Every phase of religion the world has yet seen has broken down through exaggeration of one truth at the expense of another.

The history of religious experiments is exceedingly instructive, for it shows us, first, what are the religious. instincts of humanity; and, secondly, failure, through imperfect co-ordination of these instincts. A review of the religions of the world will show us of what nature that religion must be which alone will satisfy humanity-a religion in which those inherent tendencies of the mind and soul which produced Fetishism, Anthropomorphism, Polytheism, Monotheism, Spiritualism, Idealism, Positivism, will find their co-ordinate expression; a religion in which all the sacred systems of humanity may meet, as in a Field

of the Cloth of Gold, to adorn it with their piety, their mysticism, their mythology, their subtlety of thought, their splendour of ceremonial, their adaptability to progress their elasticity of organization-and, meeting, may exhaust their own resources

"By this to sicken their estates, that never
They shall abound as formerly."1

1 Henry VIII., Act i. s. 1.

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA

Two principal instincts in man; the craving to find a cause for every effect, and the prosecution of an ideal of perfection-Analysis of consciousness-Rudimentary beliefs-The belief in causation The idea of cause not simple-Is it trustworthy?-Necessary for the development of mankind-The belief in causation makes man seek a cause for every effect man sees- He believes this cause to be a will resembling his own-The ideal of perfection-The selective faculty The imagination - Is the imagination illusive?-Concurrence of thought and sentiment in religion - Necessity for their co-ordination-Directions taken by the great races of mankind in the pursuit of the ideal.

A

MONG the instincts of humanity, not shared by the brute creation, and which have no directive action. on the material life, and exert but a secondary and subsidiary influence over social progress, are two which demand a close scrutiny.

The first of these instincts is the craving man feels to discover a cause to account for every phenomenon. The second is the prosecution of an ideal of perfection. We shall examine each of these instincts in turn. Man's consciousness has been divided by Sir William Hamilton into cognitions, feelings, and volitions. He does not affirm that these three operations-thinking, feeling, and actingmake up the sum total of the conscious life, but that they constitute the broad and clearly-defined groups into which

the data of consciousness may be sorted. This arrangement is more perfect than that of Reid, who divided the powers of the mind into understanding and will-comprehending under the latter, not only the active force precipitating action, but also the affections and passions.

The cognitions may be subdivided into presentations, external and internal; representations, including remembrances and acts of imagination; and lastly, notions, or thoughts proper.

The external presentations are those in which the mind by means of a sense is brought in contact with some external object, and from it receives an impression. In such, the sense is the vehicle through which mind and matter are brought into relation; and where a sense is deficient the corresponding ideas cannot be formed. Thus, the man born blind cannot conceive what is meant by the term scarlet.

The internal presentations are those in which the mind is brought into contact with the self, the indivisible being which constitutes our individuality. Such are the percepts of pleasure, anger, desire.

These perceptions are simple and indivisible, and escape definition. They are the ultimate atoms of the inner consciousness, ready to enter into endless combinations and undergo countless permutations, but not reducible to any prevenient ideas.

Built up on these precepts are certain rudimentary beliefs, so universal and so early acquired, that they deserve to be considered as the radicals of other beliefs.

Such is the belief in causation. An instinct prompts man to seek a cause, because he is strongly convinced of the truth of the doctrine of causality. Without this belief he would make no progress in the world, for the

world would be to him but an assemblage of chance results, and ethics and science would cease to be studied.

What do we mean by cause? All that makes a thing pass from not being to being is a primary cause; all that modifies an already existing being is a secondary cause. If a body in motion impinge on another body at rest, and disturb it, the secondary cause is the motive force of the former. But there is a presumption that some cause set the first body in motion. Secondary causality represents a concatenation of objects forming a series, which terminates in the first cause; and man instinctively gropes up the chain of secondary causes in search of the self-generating spring of motion which he calls the first cause.

The idea of cause is not a simple idea, for it contains (1) The idea of being; and (2) the relation of that which passes from not being to being. The idea of being is not sufficient to constitute the idea of cause, for it is quite possible to conceive being apart from causative force. A thing is we cannot define what we mean by this statement, but it conveys to us a perfectly intelligible proposition. Let us abstract all that is not it, and let us endeavour to suppose no other being which may have produced it, or taken part in its production. The possibility of transition from not being to being becomes to us utterly inconceivable. We not only do not see the possibility of the emergence of being out of not being, but we see in this idea the impossibility of this emergence. They are ideas which exclude one another.1

Whatever passes from a condition of not being to being requires something distinct from itself to produce this transition. Such is a primary belief of mankind, a belief wholly ineradicable, upon which even those metaphysicians

1 Balmez: Fundamental Philosophy, book x.