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It is a matter of common knowledge that there is no subject which is stimulating more widespread interest and discussion than the subject of religion. While, on the one hand, religion is being attacked by those who, in an earlier age, would have been called “free-thinkers” and “infidels,” it is, on the other hand, being extolled by its defenders with equal vigor and eloquence. It appears obvious to the detached onlooker that in this great to-do more heat than light is being generated. In such cases it sometimes turns out that an attempt to get at fundamentals helps clarify the situation. Such a fundamental analysis would attempt, among other things, to answer the question of what the origin of religion may be. In general, a natural history of the genesis and evolution of religion would appear to be a necessary prolegomena to the attempt to answer such questions as to whether religion has been, or need be, a curse upon the human race, as such iconoclasts as Harry Elmer Barnès believe, or whether it is the greatest boon and blessing to humanity, being indeed the imprint of the divine in man, as most religious thinkers hold.
In the following account I shall attempt such an analysis as is suggested above, and shall try to answer the questions appropriate to such an investigation.
One of the most obvious and significant facts about religion is its universality. It thrives in all places and appears at all times in human history. We have it on the authority of Voltaire that if God did not exist it would be necessary for human beings to create Him. This is only another way of bringing out the truth of the observation concerning the universality of the religious consciousness.