The plan of this work embraces only the religions of civilised peoples. What are miscalled 'primitive' religions are a subject for themselves, demanding another method, and much too extensive to be incidentally despatched in the prolegomena to a History of Religions. Nor is an investigation of them necessary to our purpose; the phenomena which occur in the higher religions as survivals are just as intelligible in Babylonia or in Greece as in Africa or Australia. The present volume comprises the religious of China, Japan, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, India, Persia (Zoroastrianism), Greece and Rome (including the religious of the Empire).