Note: The cover of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.A more extensive transcriber’s note can be found at the end of this book.
THE NON-RELIGION
OF THE FUTURE

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
OF
M. GUYAU
Emblem
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1897
Copyright, 1897,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.
[iii]
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—Theexact sense in which one must understand the non-religion as distinguishedfrom the “religion of the future.”
  • IV. The value and utility, for the time being, of religion; its ultimateinsufficiency,      1
  • Part First.
  • THE GENESIS OF RELIGIONS IN PRIMITIVESOCIETIES.
  • CHAPTER I.
  • RELIGIOUS PHYSICS.
  • Importance of the Problem of the Origin of Religion—Universalityof Religious Beliefs or Superstitions—Variability of Religions andReligious Evolution.
  • I. Idealist theory which attributes the origin of religion to a notion ofthe infinite—Henotheism of Max Müller and Von Hartmann—M. Renan’sInstinct for Divinity.
  • II. Theory of a worship of the dead and of spirits—Herbert Spencer—Spencer’sobjections to the theory of the attribution of a soul to naturalforces.
  • III. Answer to objections—Religious physics sociological in form, andthe substitution of relations between malevolent or beneficent consciousbeings for relations between natural forces—Sociomorphism of primitivePeoples,      21
  • CHAPTER II.
  • RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS.
  • I. Animism or polydemonism—Formation of the dualist conception ofspirit—Social relations with spirits.
  • II. Providence and miracles—The evolution of the dualist conception of[iv]a special providence—The conception of miracles—The supernatural andthe natural—Scientific explanation and miracles—Social and moral modificationsin the character of man, owing to supposed social relations with aspecial providence—Increasing sentiment of irresponsibility and passivityand “absolute dependence.”
  • III. The creation—Genesis of the notion of creation—The dualistic elementsin this idea—Monism—Classification of systems of religious metaphysics—Criticismof the classification proposed by Von Hartmann—Criticismof the classification proposed by Auguste Comte,      80
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