Excerpt from The Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of Its History The question of the origin of religion, and of the nature of primitive religion, was not, as a rule, seriously taken up by the early philosophy of religion, nor made the subject of any thorough investi gation; in recent times, however, it has come to the front, and has become one of the burning questions of religious science. And this is as it should be. For the nature of a mental phenomenon such as religion, is only unfolded in the totality of its development in history, and can only be understood as a whole when its origin has been traced, and its springs laid bare. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.