686 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of religion which lies back of its ceremonial is the suppression of the tendency to individualistic, elemental impulses, in favor of those which have a higher significance It would appear, then, that in rela- tion to our modern complex and self-conscious intellectual life the function of religion will lie to a great extent in the restraint of reason and its subordination to faith" (pp. 297-8). It is obvious that the general view of the social importance of religion held by Mr. Marshall is very similar to that of Mr. Kidd, but differences of detail are pointed out in a special chapter.
The author is at great pains to make it appear that religion is an instinct, but it is not evident that he has done this. His treatment of instinct on the animal side is very clear, but not new in any important respect, and only preliminary, and interest is whetted in anticipation of a fine bit of work based on child-study and perhaps on ethnological data. But this does not follpw ; it is not even seriously attempted. The one definite case taken from children is given in a footnote, and relates to a girl, intentionally reared without mention of religious sub- jects, who at an early age asked her mother if she might not " say a little prayer." But though the mother and the kindergarten teacher had not given the child religious notions, it must be admitted that children get a good deal of information from others than their parents and teachers. This child had learned the word for prayer from some- one, and doubtless had some description of the practice from the same person, and the case seems not one of instinct, but of imitation. Simi- larly, the use of ethnological facts is scant and chary. This line is so fruitful and so unexplored in connection with instinct and habit that it seems sheer pity that a writer touching on race psychology should merely "look back into the dim past and imagine the conditions which must have existed amongst the ancestors of the human race . . . ." (p. 309). Far better consult the old travelers, unveracious as they often were. So far, then, as proof goes we have no occasion to conclude that reli- gious feeling and practice are not socially rather than instinctively kept up. The importance of this contention appears to be, in the author's scheme, its newness, more than anything else, for he says: "But even if we assume that religious activities are not instinctive, but are entirely due to tradition and to the imitation of the example of others, even then it seems to me that we are compelled to assume that the activities have functional import in the development of the race." This is pro- foundly true, but it has been a commonplace ever since Spencer and others worked it out. It thus appears that the interesting field of the
