ABSTRACT
Besides, apart from those indirect consequences, the study of primitive religions in itself has immediate interest of the fi rst importance.
If it is useful to know what a given religion consists of; it is far more important to examine
FIRST OF ALL, WE CANNOT ARRIVE at an understanding of the most modern religions without tracing historically the manner in which they have gradually taken shape. Indeed, history is the only method of explanatory analysis that can be applied to them. History alone enables us to break down an institution into its component parts, because it shows those parts to us as they are born in time, one after the other. Second, by situating each part of the institution within the totality of circumstances in which it was born, history puts into our hands the only tools we have for identifying the causes that have brought it into being. Thus, whenever we set out to explain something human at a specifi c moment in time-be it a religious belief, a moral rule, a legal principle, an aesthetic technique, or an economic system-we must begin by going back to its simplest and most primitive form. We must seek to account for the features that defi ne it at that period of its existence and then show how it has gradually developed, gained in complexity, and become what it is at the moment under consideration.
