What the author has tried to do in this book is to select from out of the mass of material a few specimens, as who, randomly diving into an ocean, should return with a handful or two of seaweed or of pebbles, and to proceed to make thereon a scattered kind of a commentary. The theory was that most religious literature was the outcome of some king of a clash or conflict, and bore stamped on it the nature of this conflict, and the fusion, victory or defeat which had been its outcome.