First Sentence

"WITHOUT prejudicing the issue at the outset of the investigation by attempting anything in the nature of precise definition of the institution of sacrifice, the broad distinction between blood offerings and the bloodless oblation, familiar through the story of Cain and Abel, and similar interpretations of the ritual, suggests a line of approach which takes us at once to the earliest strivings of the human race after things unseen, and at the same time opens the way for the exploration of the rudimentary aspects of sacrificial cultus."