cond, and then
again in the sequence from the second to the third, there will be found
a helpful explanation of the rites and aspirations of human religion. It
is this idea, illustrated by details of ceremonial and so forth, which
forms the main thesis of the present book. In this sequence of growth,
Christianity enters as an episode, but no more than an episode. It does
not amount to a disruption or dislocation of evolution. If it did, or
if it stood as an unique or unclassifiable phenomenon (as some of its
votaries contend), this would seem to be a misfortune--as it would
obviously rob us of at any rate one promise of progress in the future.
And the promise of something better than Paganism and better than
Christianity is very precious. It is surely time that it should be
fulfilled.

The tracing, therefore, of the part that human self-consciousness has
played, psychologically, in the evolution of religion, runs like a
thread through the following chapters, and seeks illustration in a
variety of details. The idea has been repeated under different aspects;
sometimes, possibly, it has been repeated too often; but different
aspects in such a case do help, as in a stereoscope, to give solidity to
the thing seen. Though the worship of Sun-gods and divine figures in
the sky came comparatively late in religious evolution, 1 have put this
subject early in the book (chapters ii and iii), partly because (as I
have already explained) it was the phase first studied in modern times,
and therefore is the one most familiar to present-day readers, and
partly because its astronomical data give great definiteness and
"proveability" to it, in rebuttal to the common accusation that the
whole study of religious origins is too vague and uncertain to have much
value. Going backwards in Time, the two next chapters (iv and v) deal
with Totem-sacraments and Magic, perhaps the earliest forms of religion.
And these four lead on (in chapters vi to xi) to the consideration of
rites and creeds common to Paganism and Christianity. XII and xiii deal
especially with the evolution of Christianity itself; xiv and xv explain
the inner Meaning of the whole process from the beginning; and xvi and
xvii look to the Future.

The appendix on the doctrines of the Upanishads may, I hope, serve to
give an idea, intimate even though inadequate, of the third Stage--that
which follows on the stage of self-consciousness; and to portray the
mental attitudes which are