human mind; they are so drowsy that they seem unable to stand upright, one discovers their strength and their vitality only by the distance they traverse, and finally day breaks and they appear on the field and are victorious. THE NON-RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. 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 and of Spirits—Herbert Spencer—Spencer’s Objections to the Theory of the Attribution of a Soul to Natural Forces. III. Answer to Objections—Religious Physics Sociological in Form, and the Substitution of Relations between Malevolent or Beneficent Conscious Beings for Relations between Natural Forces—Socio-morphism of Primitive Peoples. [Sidenote: Importance of inquiry into genesis of religion.] The question of the genesis of religion is more important than any other historical inquiry. It involves not only the truth or falsity of past events, but the value or the reverse of our ideas and present beliefs. Each of us has something at stake in this investigation. The causes which formerly gave rise to a belief are still, in the majority of cases, those which maintain it in existence in our days, and to take stock of these causes is, whether one intends it to be so or not, to pass judgment on the belief itself. History, if it should ever be complete, would possess here the power of effacing in the future what it had failed to justify in the past. Perfectly to ascertain the origin of religions would be at the same time either to condemn them or to fortify and preserve them. [Sidenote: Established fact that every known race of people is religious.]