ABSTRACT
Repeated attempts have been made to suggest or to discover the origins of the religious impulse from the days of Herbert of Cherbury and of Pascal to those of Freud. The religious impulse, it is asserted, starting from a baulking of direct erotic expression and the substitution of ideal and mythical objects for the more concrete beloved one, thrives on the ascetic tendency. The Freudian theory, however, of the exclusively erotic origin of religion is probably too simple. An immense historical force cannot be dismissed so cavalierly; it has to be explained. There is an emotion involved which, however nonsensical or grotesque may be some of the objects upon which it expends itself, cannot be eradicated or, without psychological injury, suppressed. The traditions become every year less vital and, once intelligible as the garments of a great human satisfaction, they now remain empty clothes, incomprehensible to the critical eye of the mundane understanding.
