Book Description

Excerpt from Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution, in February and May, 1870 These Lectures, intended as an introduction to a comparative study of the principal religions of the world, were delivered at the Royal Institution in London, in February and March 1870, and printed in Fraser's Magazine of February, March, April, and May of the same year. I declined at that time to publish them in a separate form, hoping that I might find leisure to work up more fully the materials which I had collected for many years. I thought that I should thus be enabled to make these lectures more instructive and more complete, and at the same time meet several objections that had been raised by some critics against the very possibility of a scientific study of religions, and against the views which I ventured to put forward on the origin, the growth, and the real value of the ancient systems of faith, elaborated by different branches of the human race. A small edition only of these lectures was printed privately, and sent to some of my friends, whose remarks have proved in many cases most valuable and instructive. If now I have decided on republishing these Lec tures, I have done so because I fear that as during the three years that have elapsed since their delivery. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.