It may seem strange that a volume on civilization in the United States does not include a specific article on religion, and the omission is worth a paragraph of explanation. Outside the bigger cities, certainly no one can understand the social structure of contemporary American life without careful study of the organization and power of the church. Speaking generally, we are a church-going people, and at least on the surface the multiplicity of sects and creeds, the sheer immensity of the physical apparatus by which the religious impulse is articulated, would seem to prove that our interest in and emotional craving for religious experience are enormous. But the omission has not been due to any superciliousness on our part towards the subject itself; on the contrary, I suppose I have put more thought and energy into this essay, which has not been written, than into any other problem connected with the book. The bald truth is, it has been next to impossible to get any one to write on the subject; most of the people I approached shied off--it was really difficult to get them to talk about it at all. Almost unanimously, when I did manage to procure an opinion from them, they said that real religious feeling in America had disappeared, that the church had become a purely social and political institution, that the country is in the grip of what Anatole France has aptly called Protestant clericalism, and that, finally, they weren’t interested in the topic. The accuracy of these observations (except the last) I cannot, of course, vouch for, but it is rather striking that they were identical. In any event, the topic as a topic has had to be omitted; but it is not neglected, for in several essays directly--in particular, “Philosophy” and “Nerves”--and in many by implication the subject is discussed. At one time Mr. James Harvey Robinson consented to write the article--and it would have been an illuminating piece of work--but unfortunately ill health and the pressure of official duties made the task impossible for him within the most generous time limit that might be arranged. I have spoken already of the unity which underlies the volume. When I remember all these essays, and try to summon together the chief themes that run through them, either by explicit statement or as a kind of underlying rhythm to all, in order to justify the strong impression of unity, I find three major contentions that may be said to be basic--contentions all the more significant inasmuch as they were unpremeditated and were arrived at, as it were, by accident rather than design. They are: