On Religion Considered in Its Source, Its Forms, and Its Developments
- Benjamin Constant (author)
- Peter Paul Seaton Jr. (translator)
Constant worked on this study of humanity’s religious forms and development throughout his life, publishing five volumes between 1824 and 1831. He sought to relate religious forms to historical contexts and civilizational developments, to show partisans of the post-revolutionary order that the religious impulse was natural to the human heart, and to show religious reactionaries that the natural state of religious sentiment was an unfettered spirituality left free to find new forms of expression.