ABSTRACT
W h a t raised man from savagery to civilisation was the transition from a natural to an artificial basis of food-supply, i.e. was the domestication of animals and cultivation of plants; and such domestication and cultivation was, as we have endeavoured to show, the outcome, not the designed but none the less the inevitable outcome, of the earliest form of religion, that is, totemism, the worship of plants and animals. Having shown that religion gave the first impetus to material progress, we have now to show how material progress reacted on religion, how the widening circle of human activity brought man into more extensive contact with the forces of nature, rendering their co-operation with him more necessary, and giving him fresh reasons to establish friendly relations and a permanent alliance with the powers on whose goodwill the increase of his flocks or the fertility of his fields depended.
