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  THE NON-RELIGION
  OF THE FUTURE

  _A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY_


  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
  OF
  M. GUYAU

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
  1897




  COPYRIGHT, 1897,
  BY
  HENRY HOLT & CO.


  THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
  RAHWAY, N. J.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  INTRODUCTION.

  I. Sociality the basis of religion—Its definition.

  II. The connection between religion, æsthetics, and morals.

  III. The inevitable decomposition of all systems of dogmatic
  religion; the state of “non-religion” toward which the human mind
  seems to tend—The exact sense in which one must understand the
  non-religion as distinguished from the “religion of the future.”

  IV. The value and utility, for the time being, of religion; its
  ultimate insufficiency,                                             1


  Part First.

  THE GENESIS OF RELIGIONS IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES.


  _CHAPTER I._

  RELIGIOUS PHYSICS.

  IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION—UNIVERSALITY
    OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OR SUPERSTITIONS—VARIABILITY OF RELIGIONS AND
    RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION.

  I. Idealist theory which attributes the origin of religion to
  a notion of the infinite—Henotheism of Max Müller and Von
  Hartmann—M. Renan’s Instinct for Divinity.

  II. Theory of a worship of the dead