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 traditional belief, a large, part is undoubtedly
played by forgotten childish memories and early religious discipline,
surging up and contributing their part to the self's new apprehensions
of Reality.

If, then, the cultus did nothing else, it would do these two highly
important things. It would influence our whole present attitude by its