Writing with reference to Moses and Monotheism, the author is somewhat critical of Freud's view that a belief in God comes from inherited racial memories of the primal father. He is more inclined to attribute it to ontogenetic factors, such as the child's relationship to its father and a diffusion of its early narcissistic self-feeling. He considers that monotheism, as distinct from polytheism, is a result of the individual's increasing power, as he grows up, to abstract and generalize.