The Religious Sentiment / Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and / Philosophy of Religion

This work analyzes the origins and nature of religious feeling through an inductive survey of diverse religions combined with psychological theory. It argues that religions arise from laws of mind—sensations, emotions, and thought—and examines emotional elements, rational postulates, prayer, myth cycles, cultic symbols and rites, and the logical structures that underlie belief, including distinctions between conditioned and unconditioned knowledge. Chapters move from mental physiology to the forms of religious thought, aiming to explain how human cognitive and affective processes produce religious ideas and practices and how prayer and symbolism function within those systems.