THE KELIGIOUS INSTINCT. 41 I. 2. I wish now to call attention to a fact which seems to me to be of importance in this connexion. It must be granted, I think, that there are many influences at work in the guas-i-organic social life of that civilisation in which man lives which tend to produce an over-emphasis of elemental variance, and to disturb the typical orider of subordination of the instincts which we have considered ; influences which lead especially to the enforcement of in- dividualistic impulses and which tend to bring about an opposition to the force of the higher social instincts. To some of these influences I wish for a moment to direct the reader's attention. It will be remembered that in treating of an individual organism I called attention to the fact that if the effect upon some special elemental part, resulting from the stimuli which reach it, be especially forceful, this part may tend to act for itself with little reference to the value of its action in relation to the whole individual of which it is a part. Thus, to repeat myself, the heart in its own interest, so to speak, may undertake extraordinary work which if not regulated by organic influences may result destructively to the organism as a whole. I have also asked the reader to note that this elemental variant action will be less likely to take place in animals whose organic structure is complete and fixed ; and more likely to take place in those organic forms in which the elemental parts are less closely interrelated, so that the action in any one organ is relatively less dependent upon the action in other organs. The reader will also now perceive, I think, why I have called his attention with emphasis in one of the preceding articles to the fact that the hypothetical social organism of which we individuals are supposed to be elements, if it exist, must be an organism resembling the lower forms of individual organic life ; and that the interdependence, the integration, between the individual elements of the social organism must be relatively very slight, even as it is be- tween the parts of these lower individual organisms. In the racial life of man it is indeed in very many cases self- evident that the bond of interdependence between indi- viduals is a very weak one indeed : the ties that have held the aggregate together may with little difficulty be broken, and new aggregates with changed relations may be formed. The Anglo-Saxon, reared under the valuable restraints of
