AND now we have reached at last the end of our long and toilsome disquisition. I need hardly say, to those who have persisted with me so far, that I do not regard a single part of it all as by any means final. There is not a chapter in this book, indeed, which I could not have expanded to double or treble its present length, had I chosen to include in it a tithe of the evidence I have gathered on the subject with which it deals. But for many adequate reasons, compression was imperative. Some of the greatest treatises ever written on this profoundly important and interesting question have met with far less than the attention they deserved because they were so bulky and so overloaded with evidence that the reader could hardly see the wood for the trees; he lost the thread of the argument in the mazes of example. In my own case, I had or believed I had a central idea; and I desired to set that idea forth with such simple brevity as would enable the reader to grasp it and to follow it. I go, as it were, before a Grand Jury only. I do not pretend in any one instance to have proved my points; I am satisfied if I have made out a prima facie case for further enquiry.

My object in the present reconstructive treatise has therefore been merely to set forth in as short a form as was consistent with clearness my conception of the steps by which mankind arrived at its idea of its God. I have not tried to produce evidence on each step in full; I have only tried to lay before the general public a rough sketch of a psychological 435rebuilding, and to suggest at the same time to scholars and anthropologists some inkling of the lines along which evidence in favour of my proposed reconstruction is likeliest to be found. This book is thus no more than a summary of probabilities. Should it succeed in attracting attention and arousing interest in so vast and fundamental a subject, I shall hope to follow it up by others in future, in which the various component elements of my theory will be treated in detail, and original authorities will be copiously quoted with the fullest references. As, however, in this preliminary outline of my views I have dealt with few save well-known facts, and relied for the most part upon familiar collocations of evidence, I have not thought it necessary to encumber my pages with frequent and pedantic footnotes, referring to the passages or persons quoted. The scholar will know well enough where to look for the proofs he needs, while the general reader can only judge my rough foreshadowing of a hypothesis according as he is impressed by its verisimilitude or the contrary.

If, on the other hand, this avant-courier of a reasoned system fails to interest the public, I must perforce be content to refrain from going any deeper in print into this fascinating theme, on which I have still an immense number of ideas and facts which I desire the opportunity of publicly ventilating.

I wish also to remark before I close that I do not hold dogmatically to the whole or any part of the elaborate doctrine here tentatively suggested. I have changed my own mind far too often, with regard to these matters, in the course of my personal evolution, ever to think I have reached complete finality. Fifteen or twenty years ago, indeed, I was rash enough to think I had come to anchor, when I first read Mr. Herbert Spencer’s sketch of the origin of religion in the opening volume of the Principles of Sociology. Ten or twelve years since, doubts and difficulties again obtruded themselves. Six years ago, once more, 436when The Golden Bough appeared, after this book had been planned and in part executed, I was forced to go back entirely upon many cherished former opinions, and to reconsider many questions which I had fondly imagined were long since closed for me. Since that time, new lights have been constantly shed upon me from without, or have occurred to me from within: and I humbly put this sketch forward now for what it may be worth, not with the idea that I have by any means fathomed the whole vast truth, but in the faint hope that I may perhaps have looked down here and there a little deeper into the profound abysses beneath us than has been the lot of most previous investigators. At the same time, I need hardly reiterate my sense of the immense obligations under which I lie to not a few among them, and preeminently to Mr. Spencer, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Hartland, and Dr. Tylor. My only claim is that I may perhaps have set forth a scheme of reconstruction which further evidence will possibly show to be true in parts, and mistaken in others..

On the other hand, by strictly confining my attention to religious features, properly so called, to the exclusion of mythology, ethics, and all other external accretions or accidents, I trust I have been able to demonstrate more clearly than has hitherto been done the intimate con............