The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion

This little book, the last of a series of similar volumes each containing an exposition by a recognised authority of one of the many Religions the world has known, might have been put with as much propriety at the head of the series, there to show how Religion originated in the mind of man, what mental powers it presupposes, what is its nature and what its relation to the non-religious life. But one is, no doubt, better able to take up profitably these problems after having familiarised oneself with the several aspects of religious life. Therefore The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion was placed at the end, where it fulfils the additional purpose of linking the concluded series of Histories of Religions with a cognate one, now being prepared by the same publishers, on Ancient and Modern Systems of Philosophy.