This great work by L. was written in the Vologda exile, where he was sent in 1867 for his participating in the secret society ‘Land and Freedom’. It was published in St. Petersburg in the ‘Sovremennoe obozreniye’ (Contemporary Review) Magazine in early 1868. Supporting Feuerbach's views on religion as a result of alienation and on anthropomorphism as the source of the emergence of religious images, in this work L. demonstrates his deep knowledge in the field of not only philosophy and history, but also comparative linguistics, philology, and biblical studies; he freely operates with the opinions of Ch. de Brosses, F. Meiners, A. Schlegel, J. Grimm, F.M. Müller, A.N. Afanasyev, D. Strauss, H.R. Baur, J. Renan and others. L. outlines the structure of the new doctrine on religion, which he calls the ‘history of beliefs’, indicating that around the mid-1830s “a solid foundation for the understanding of the history of beliefs” was laid. That, in his opinion, was facilitated by comparative linguistics and the study of folk traditions, the works of theologians and philologists, the anthropological principle and the study of Gnostic heresies, Roman and Jewish antiquities. L. pointed out the importance of works on psychology for the ‘history of beliefs’, “not yet scientifically connected with this history, but promising, apparently, to enter as an element, in the explanation of some of its phenomena”, noting, first of all, works on the theory of hallucinations, ‘spiritual epidemics’ and spiritism. At the same time, he pointed out that the “ethnographic side of the development of beliefs” would find its “development” in two branches of knowledge that have arisen recently: he considered there were the psychology of nations and anthropology. There were still three years left before the publication of E. Tylor's book ‘Primitive Culture’, and L. had already written the following: “Anthropology is the newest research group that arouses keen interest everywhere and quickly aroused several research societies, each of which publishes its own works. For the time being, either a purely natural-historical direction predominates in these works... or a purely descriptive one in relation to the found antiquities, the study of alien nationalities, etc. Due to the large number and variety of material subject to analysis by anthropologists, the question of beliefs still plays a very miserable role here, if it is ever mentioned... But, nevertheless, it is indistinguishable from the task of anthropology in its both departments, both as a doctrine of common human characteristics, and as a doctrine of differences in the human race”. (Lavrov P.L. Collected Works. Ser. V. Iss. I. Articles on the History of Religion. Petrograd., 1917. P. 51. In Russian).