An analysis of religion from an evolutionary viewpoint by Professor Robert Hinde, and first given as the BHA Voltaire Lecture in 1997. The booklet explores the different elements that go to make up religious systems: structural beliefs; narratives; and the role of rituals like prayer and sacrifice.

In particular Hinde examines the way that religion provided human communities with a common set of values and standards, and our need, as religion loses its grasp, to find a system of ethics that is valid for us today.