Fragments from E. Lang's work "The Origin of Religion", published in the anthology "Classics of Religious Studies". E. Lang is one of the first representatives of the theory of proto-monotheism (W. Schmidt, M. Eliade, F. Scheling, V. Solovyov, A. Men, A. Zubov), which asserts that the primary form of religion is faith in the One God. Already from this form “paganism” appears. In this work, Lang builds his theory in opposition to Taylor's animism, the dominant theory of the origin of religion at that time. Original pdf - Classics of World Religious Studies Vol.2 (History philosophy in monuments) - 1998 (this e-book contains only the text by E. Lang).