Excerpt from A Comparative History of Religions, Vol. 2 Of such junctures five, at least, have entered so deeply into the life of mankind that general history cannot be recorded intelligibly without them. These are, first, the change whereby, out of the Simple patri archal religion, there was gradually constructed a legal system of religious Observances: secondly, that whereby the legal observances were, in some quarters, adopted and inspired by a monotheistic reformation; thirdly, that whereby in the extremity of legal bondage and degradation, a reaction of reason was created against it; fourthly, that whereby, in the hopelessness of ra tional unbelief, men threw themselves back into legal bondage, or sustained a rational faith by a philosophic system; and fifthly that which was effected by the introduction of Christianity. 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.