The History of Religions (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The History of ReligionsIn the course of this volume we shall study the roots and the higher growth of this tree, which through its age long development, as any tree changes its earth-drawn sustenance into something more ethereal, has transmuted terror into reverent awe, hunger into hope, lust into love. We shall trace the slow progress of such roots of religion as bear today the names taboo, fetishism, totemism, see how taboo invested with spiritual power the moral com mand, insured the home, and made for civilization, how fetishism confirmed the thought that man depends on a spiritual something, gave faith in a power that helped, and made that power the judge of right and wrong, how totemism linked man in communion with the divine and in conjunction with seasonal nature-worship founded ritual in the recurrent form necessary to religious stability. We shall see in short that the higher not only is above the lower but that it has ascended out of the lower. Savagery did not give place to civilization but developed into it, was already civilization in the germ.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.