ABSTRACT
Individual men were more or less religious, as men now are more or less patriotic; that is, they discharged their religious duties with a greater or less degree of zeal according to their character and temperament; but there was no such thing as an absolutely irreligious man. The ancient Semitic communities were small, and were separated from each other by incessant feuds. Hence, on the principle of solidarity between gods and their worshippers, the particularism characteristic of political society could not but reappear in the sphere of religion. The principle that the fundamental conception of ancient religion is the solidarity of the gods and their worshippers as part of one organic society with special reference to the group of religions that forms the proper subject of these lectures. Some of the most notable and constant features of all ancient heathenism, and indeed of all nature-religions, from the totemism of savages upward, find their sufficient explanation.
