THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF RELIGIONS
BY GRANT ALLEN
AUTHOR OF “PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS” “THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS” “FORCE AND ENERGY” ETC
LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
1897
CONTENTS
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD.
CHAPTER I.—CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD.
CHAPTER II.—RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.
CHAPTER III.—THE LIFE OF THE DEAD.
CHAPTER IV.—THE ORIGIN OF GODS.
CHAPTER VIII.—THE GODS OF EGYPT.
CHAPTER IX.—THE GODS OF ISRAEL.
CHAPTER X.—THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM.
CHAPTER XII.—THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS.
CHAPTER XIII.—GODS OF CULTIVATION.
CHAPTER XIV.—CORN- AND WINE-GODS.
CHAPTER XV.—SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT.
CHAPTER XVI.—THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.
CHAPTER XVII.—THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST.
CHAPTER XVIII.—THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER XIX.—SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM.
PREFACE
TWO main schools of religious thinking exist in our midst at the present day: the school of humanists and the school of animists. This work is to some extent an attempt to reconcile them. It contains, I believe, the first extended effort that has yet been made to trace the genesis of the belief in a God from its earliest origin in the mind of primitive man up to its fullest development in advanced and etherealised Christian theology. My method is therefore constructive, not destructive. Instead of setting out to argue away or demolish a deep-seated and ancestral element in our complex nature, this book merely posits for itself the psychological question, “By what successive steps did men come to frame for themselves the