PREFACE

this book the history of early religion is investigated on e principles and methods of anthropology, and in the belief at the interests of truth and religion are fundamentally entical.

The work is intended primarily for students who require introduction to the history of religion, but will also, it is ped, prove interesting to students of folk-lore and anthro›logy, and to the wider circle of general readers.

As far as I am aware, there is no other book which covers actly the same ground as this does, or which attempts to mmarise the results of recent anthropology, to estimate eir bearing upon religious problems, and to weave the whole to a connected history of early religion.

Thus far, then, this book is original, namely, as far as gards the use to which its materials are put; but the aterials themselves are largely, though not wholly, derived om the writings of others. In all cases I have endeavoured express my obligations in the footnotes. I am, however, ore especially bound to mention here the name of the late rofessor Robertson Smith, to whose Religion of the Semites y obligations are too great for their expression to be confined. footnotes. My indebtedness to the works of Messrs. E. B. ylor, A. Lang, and Frazer is here gratefully acknowledged.