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Title: The Idea of God in Early Religions

Author: F. B. Jevons

Release Date: May 5, 2008 [eBook #25338]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY RELIGIONS

by

F. B. JEVONS, LITT.D.

Professor of Philosophy in the
University of Durham

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1913

First Edition, 1910
Reprinted 1911, 1913

_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the
design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by
the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_

PREFACE

In _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ the late Professor William
James has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an
inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological
complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its
stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse
between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves
to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both
active and mutual.' The book now before the reader deals with the
religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, in the earlier stages
of religion. By 'the Idea of God' may be meant either the
consciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they
feel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others,
seek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression,
that is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that
consciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling,
without which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the
words are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we
have to approach the feeling and the consciousness of others, and to
determine whether and how far the feeling and the