RELIGIOUS ORIGINS AND SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY.

The article examines the sociological aspects of the origin of religion. The basic assumption of this study is that religion comes from human nature. Religion is the interaction between man and a supernatural order which he believes to exist and which he defines in terms derived from his social experience, together with whatever is implicated in such interaction. The local ideas are "interaction," "super-natural," and "social." Religion is not belief by itself, or emotion, or anything else short of a process of interaction. It is a two-way process, a give-and-take, a mutual influencing, not infrequently a transaction. It goes on, within man's experience, and the question of an objective counterpart is irrelevant from the standpoint of the scientific observer. Religious quality is conferred upon objects and situations by what men do with them. Therefore, what is religious in one culture may not be in another. Objects may be implicitly religious before they are explicitly defined as such. Universals in human nature rather than historical accident and diffusion explain the wide distribution of religious phenomena, which is not true of particular religious systems, nor of all specific traits.