thus lifted to richer levels of life and brought into touch with
higher values? We have indeed only to observe the enrichment of life so
often produced in those who thus dwell meekly and without inner conflict
in the symbolic world of ceremonial religion, and accept its discipline
and its gifts, to be led at least to a humble suspension of judgment as
to its value. A whole world of spiritual experience separates the humble
little church mouse rising at six every morning to attend a service
which she believes to be pleasing to a personal God, from the
philosopher who meditates on the Absolute in a comfortable armchair;
and no one will feel much doubt as to which side the advantage lies.

Here we approach the next point. The cultus, with its liturgy and its
discipline, exists for and promotes the repetition of acts which are
primarily the expression of man's instinct for God; and by these--or any
other repeated acts--our ductile instinctive life is given a definite
trend. We know from Semon's researches[126] that the performance of any
given act by a living creature influences all future performances of
similar acts. That is to say, memory combines with each fresh stimulus
to control our reaction to it. "In the case of living organisms," says
Bertrand Russell, "practically everything that is distinctive both of
their physical and mental behaviour is bound up with this persistent
influence of the past": and most actions and responses "can only be
brought under causal laws by including past occurrences in the history
of the organism as part of the causes of the present response."[127] The
phenomena of apperception, in fact, form only one aspect of a general
law. As that which we have perceived conditions what we can now
perceive, so that which we have done conditions what we shall do. It
therefore appears that in spite of angry youthful revolts or mature
sophistications, early religious training, and especially repeated
religious _acts_, are likely to influence the whole of our future
lives. Though all they meant to us seems dead or unreal, they have
retreated to the dark background of consciousness and there live on. The
tendency which they have given persists; we never get away from them. A
church may often seem to lose her children, as human parents do; but in
spite of themselves they retain her invisible seal, and are her children
still. In nearly all conversions in middle life, or dramatic returns
from scepticism to tr