This book deals with: The psychological origin and the fundamental Nature of Religion, The Original Emotion of Primitive Religious Life; and The Function of Religion.

The failure to recognise in Religion three functionally related constituents — conation, feeling, and thought — is responsible for a confusing use of the term ‘origin.’ Some have said that Religion began with the belief in superhuman, mysterious beings; others that it had its origin in the emotional life, and these usually specify fear; while a third group have declared that its genesis is to be found in the will-to-live. At this stage of our inquiry the reader realises no doubt that these three utterances are incomplete, inasmuch as each one of them expresses either the origin, or the original form, of only one of the constituents of Religion.