ABSTRACT
Religion has been an important phase of human life in the history of mankind. No society has ever been reported in which men have not conceived of their welfare as being in some degree dependent upon supernatural or extraordinary powers. In the process of attaining security through control of or adjustment to such powers they have established different patterns of conduct, belief, and feeling. In some societies religion has been an isolated phase—a separate department of supernatural relations, requiring man’s attention only upon given occasions. In others religion has been a mold in which almost all of life’s activities have been shaped, so that from his earliest lisp to his last breath a man lives in the eyes of God, following all the details of God’s plan for the righteous, feeling every striving as a command issuing from God or a yearning towards God, and greeting every turn of fortune as burden or blessing divinely ordained. Between these extremes lie most societies; study of them provides a brilliant display of the depth and breadth of human feeling, insight, and imagination.
