Chapter IX: The Religious Sentiment 304

Importance of the subject—Its Divisions. First Period:
origin of the religious feeling—Primitive notions of the
Infinite (Max Müller); Ancestor-worship (H.
Spencer)—Fetichism, animism; Predominance of
fear—Practical, utilitarian, social, but not moral
character—Second period: (1) Intellectual evolution;
Conception of a Cosmic Order first physical, then
moral—Function of increasing generalisation; its stages;
(2) Emotional evolution; Predominance of love; addition of
the moral sentiment—Third Period: Supremacy of the
rational element; Transformation into religious
philosophy; Effacement of the emotional element—Religious
emotion is a complete emotion—Manifold physiological
states accompanying it; ritual, a special form of the
expression of emotion—The religious sentiment as a
passion—Pathology—Depressive forms: religious melancholy,
demonomania—Exalted forms: ecstasy, theomania.