CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
The study examines religion in its early stages, arguing that communal language and shared consciousness shape ideas of higher powers and the emotions that accompany them. It traces how myth, worship, and prayer articulate and transform those ideas, showing a movement from impersonal forces and locally named spirits toward more personal and abstract conceptions. Comparative evidence of ritual forms, naming practices, and prayer-language is used to demonstrate how words and rites mediate religious feeling, and concluding reflection considers how experiential intercourse with higher powers becomes framed as philosophical and theological accounts of divine being.