The Passing of the Gods
New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1934. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 12mo. Fine / Very Good. Item #010392
Orig. brown cloth. xvi, 326 pp. Clipping of image of Pasht tipped-in to half-title. Magazine clipping of Religion: The Power of Hell" to rfep. Ink notes to rear endpapers. Bookplate of C.B. Farrar. Dust jacket sunned to spine, bumped to edges, several short tears to extremities repaired with acidified tape. In this challenging volume religion is examined for the first time from the "outside in" rather than the "inside out." The author contends that critical students of religion have previously "begun with the mind and worked outward, while what we should have done was to have begun with the outer forces and worked inward." Accordingly, Mr. Calverton believes that the way to understand religion is not by dealing with it as an isolated institution but by studying the interests it has served, which he has done by examining the role that religion has played in shaping the character of the human mind from primitive and ancient times to the present day. Religion, Mr. Calverton seeks to prove, has derived its power over the human race by virtue of reading the material interests of man into the scheme of the universe, endowing man with an illusion of power over the forces of nature and the cosmos. That illusion science has destroyed by providing man with the power religion has promised but never fulfilled. The human mind, the author contends, has an underlying and almost ineradicable craving for power, and will ally itself on whichever side the greatest promise of power inheres. Religion, declares Mr. Calverton, has held the human mind in its thrall in the past because it satisfied better than any other force that craving for power.
Price: $75.00