ABSTRACT
T h e material progress made by man, as he advanced from the material basis of subsistence on roots, fruits, and the chase, first to pastoral and then to agricultural life, required that he should make an ever-increasing use for his own ends of natural forces. These forces were to him living beings with superhuman powers, of whom he stood in dread, but whose co-operation he required. Without some confidence that it was possible, if he set about it in the right way, to secure their favour and assistance, his efforts would have been paralysed. That confidence was given him by religion; he was brought into friendly relations with powers from which, in his previously narrow circle of interests, he had had little to hope or to gain; and thus the number of his gods had been increased.
