The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of Religion, by Andrew Lang

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Title: The Making of Religion

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12353]
[Date last updated: March 30, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MAKING OF RELIGION

BY
ANDREW LANG

M.A., LL.D. ST ANDREWS

HONORARY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE OXFORD
SOMETIME GIFFORD LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

SECOND EDITION
1900

_TO THE PRINCIPAL
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS

DEAR PRINCIPAL DONALDSON,

I hope you will permit me to lay at the feet of the University of St.
Andrews, in acknowledgment of her life-long kindnesses to her old pupil,
these chapters on the early History of Religion. They may be taken as
representing the Gifford Lectures delivered by me, though in fact they
contain very little that was spoken from Lord Gifford's chair. I wish they
were more worthy of an Alma Mater which fostered in the past the leaders
of forlorn hopes that were destined to triumph; and the friends of lost
causes who fought bravely against Fate--Patrick Hamilton, Cargill, and
Argyll, Beaton and Montrose, and Dundee.

Believe me

Very sincerely yours,

ANDREW LANG_.

* * * * *

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

By the nature of things this book falls under two divisions. The first
eight chapters criticise the current anthropological theory of the origins
of the belief in _spirits._ Chapters ix.-xvii., again, criticise the
current anthropological theory as to how, the notion of _spirit_ once
attained, man arrived at the idea of a Supreme Being. These two branches
of the topic are treated in most modern works concerned with the Origins
of Religion, such as Mr. Tyler's "Primitive Culture," Mr. Herbert
Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," Mr. Jevons's "Introduction to the
History of Religion," the late Mr. Grant Allen