The Universality of Religion

§ I. The Universality of Religion as a Fact

The nature of religion would lead us to expect that it should exercise a controlling and governing influence upon all men. We find this to be the case. Religion has always been the most important factor in the life of nations and in the development of the whole human race. For this reason belief in God and religious convictions exist everywhere, not merely as potential dispositions and the logical preambles of supernatural revelation, but likewise as its real and objective foundation. Moreover, as we shall see presently, the universality of religion is a proof of its objective truth.

However, since religion has its source in free-will, and religious activity in general as well as its perfection depend on the unhampered self-determination of that faculty, the universality of religion (a) must not be understood in the physical sense, i. e., as if it admitted no exception, but only in the moral sense, and (b) we must not expect to find too much perfection in the different natural religions. A nation must be admitted to be religious if the essentials of religion can be traced in its beliefs and customs. Religion exists wherever men are convinced of the existence of a supernatural Being which governs their destinies and to which they owe submission.

Religion is found among all nations and in all ages.

1. Religion existed among men as far back as historical records reach.—According to Cicero (d. 43 B. C.), there is no nation or tribe so uncultured that it does not acknowledge some sort of a deity,¹1De Leg., I, c. 24: “In hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta neque tam fera, quae non etiamsi ignoret, qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat.” and belief in God is inborn in all men, engraved upon their very souls, as it were.²2De Nat. Deorum, II, c. 4 sq.: “Inter omnes omnium gentium summa constat: omnibus enim innatum est et in animo quasi insculptum esse deos. Quales sint, varium est, esse nemo negat.” Seneca (d. 38 A. D.) asserts that there is no nation so completely beyond the reach of law and morality that it does not believe in gods of some sort.³3Ep., 117: “Omnibus de diis opinio insita est, nec ulla gens unquam est adeo extra leges moresque posita, ut non aliquos deos credat.” Plutarch agrees with him. “If you travel from country to country,” he says in a famous passage, “you may find cities without walls, without sciences and arts, without kings and palaces, without riches; cities where money is unknown or not in use; cities without public buildings and theatres; but no one has ever seen, and no one will ever see, a city without temples, gods, prayers, oaths, and oracles; a city which does not seek by means of sacrifices and religious festivals to obtain favors and to avert evils.”⁴4Adv. Coloten., 31. Artimidor (about 200 A. D.) expresses the opinion that “there is no nation without a god.”⁵5Oneirocr., I, c. 8. In the much earlier poems of Homer we meet with the statement that “all men have an inborn yearning for the gods.”⁶6Odyssey, III, 48.

2. The leading modern representatives of anthropology, ethnology, and comparative religion,—men like Waitz, Peschl, Gerland, F. Max Müller, von Strauss-Torney, Quatrefages, Tylor, Tiele, and Ratzel,—agree that there is no nation entirely without religion. For the sake of brevity we shall quote only Ratzel. “Ethnography,” says this eminent authority, “knows no peoples entirely without religion, but only an unequal development of religious ideas, which with some nations remained in the germ, or, more correctly, in the pupillary stage, small and unimpressive, whereas with others it has developed a wealth of myths and legends.”⁷7Völkerkunde, Vol. I, 2nd ed., Leipsic, 1894, p. 37.

We shall illustrate this proposition by a survey of the various existing religions, which will show that there has never been a nation entirely without religion, but that, on the contrary, the character and development of the religious beliefs held by various nations indicate that, in point of religion, the human race stood higher in the beginning than in later ages.

Some Objections Refuted

Against our thesis that religion is universal the following objections have been raised:

1. The ancient testimonies cited are neutralized by others which deny the universality of religion on the ground that there have been infidel nations as well as individual unbelievers. The existence of nations without any religious beliefs whatever is attested, for instance, by Carneades Of Cyrene (d. 130 B. C.)⁸8Cfr. E. Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, Vol. III, Pt. 1, 5th ed., Leipsic, 1923, pp. 505 sqq. and by Pontifex Cotta,⁠⁹9Cfr. Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, I, 23, 62. a contemporary of Cicero. Of individual atheists we need only mention Diagoras the Sophist,¹⁰10Op. cit., I, 23, 63. and Theodore Of Cyrene.¹¹11Ibid.

2. Even at the present time, we are told by such writers as Sir John Lubbock¹²12Pre-Historic Times, 6th ed., London, 1900, pp. 551 sqq. and Ludwig Büchner,¹³13Kraft und Stoff, 21st ed., Leipsic, 1904, pp. 379 sq. there are nations that have no idea of God or religion, as is attested by many travelers and missionaries.

3. Others point to the 500 million human beings who profess Buddhism, which is essentially atheistic. If one-third of the human race is without religious convictions, they say, religion cannot be universal.

4. Finally, it is said, we must reckon with the notorious fact that all civilized countries at the present time are badly infested with atheism.

We answer:

1. No weight is to be attached to those ancient writers who assert the existence of godless nations, for none such are named, and the testimonies in question are merely the expression of subjective opinion or conjecture.¹⁴14For instance, Cotta’s: “Equidem arbitror, multas esse gentes …” (Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, I, 23, 62). As regards Diagoras and Theodore of Cyrene, their atheistic professions do not disprove or weaken our thesis, because we assert the moral, not the physical universality of religion.

2. The list of godless nations drawn up by Sir John Lubbock and others has dwindled to nothing in the light of recent investigations. Not a single nation has been found that does not possess at least some primitive form of religious belief. The earlier assumption that godless nations actually existed, was the result of inadequate observation, wrong presuppositions, one-sided judgments, and unfounded assertions on the part of writers who were not properly equipped for this kind of work or went at it with the set purpose of discrediting religion. Some travelers based their conclusions as to the absence of religion among this or that tribe on casual observation, impeded, moreover, by ignorance of the native languages. The worthlessness of their conclusions has been established by more adequately equipped and keener students, who sometimes discovered the existence of religion only after years of careful observation in a tribe which they themselves had at first regarded as godless.

Prejudice, too, has contributed its share to the erroneous notions that have been current on this subject, and has made it very difficult in some cases to form a correct estimate of religious beliefs and usages. The champions of materialistic evolution never for a moment doubted that religion was impossible among peoples in a low state of civilization, and hailed with pleasure every report that seemed to favor this opinion, ignoring those which could not easily be reconciled with their assumption.

The well-nigh insuperable disinclination of many savages to talk about their religious opinions and customs,—either because they fear to see them derided or profaned, or because some positive law forbids them to reveal the names of their deities or the nature of their worship,—makes it difficult to interpret their religious beliefs correctly. Moreover, uncivilized peoples usually have an imperfectly developed religious consciousness, which renders it difficult for the individual to answer questions that may be put to him in regard to his beliefs. Hence it is not strange that many of their religious beliefs were concealed and others purposely misrepresented.

Finally, it should be noted that in judging religious phenomena and conditions many scholars employed criteria which inevitably led them astray. If a language lacked a word, for instance, it was forthwith concluded that the people who spoke it lacked the corresponding concept. Where no equivalent was found for such terms as “God” and “religion,” it was assumed that the respective ideas were wanting. The unreliability of this method could be shown by many examples.¹⁵15Cfr. G. Roskoff, Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturvölker, Leipsic, 1880, p. 10. It was equally unscientific to employ the refined religious concepts of highly cultured nations as a standard for gauging the beliefs and practices of uncivilized tribes and thereby to stamp primitive ideas and customs as superstitions or the product of sorcery or fear of ghosts. Quatrefages pointed out the right way when he wrote: “However simple and incomplete, however naïve and childish, however absurd it may be, a belief should not lose its character in his [the anthropologist’s] eyes, if it has any connection with that element which is common and essential to all religions.”¹⁶16A. de Quatrefages, The Human Species, International Scientific Series, New York, 1879, p. 483.

Keeping in mind the errors that have been made in investigating the religious beliefs and practices of uncivilized tribes, we find it easy to understand why so many nations were looked upon as godless by a certain class of writers, whereas the real authorities on ethnology and comparative religion knew nothing of this alleged deficiency.¹⁷17W. Schneider, Die Naturvölker, Vol. II, Paderborn, 1886, pp. 347 sqq., gives the scientific proofs for the above assertion. Cfr. the same author’s work, Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, Münster i. W., 1891, pp. 2 sqq.; G. Roskoff, op. cit. (note 15 supra); Msgr. A. Le Roy, The Religion of the Primitives, tr. by N. Thompson, New York, 1922, pp. 238 sqq.—Important work in investigating the religion of the primitive races has been done of late years by P. Wm. Schmidt, S.V.D., who has published a number of books on the subject and created an organ for the publication of research work in the quarterly ethnologic and linguistic review Anthropos, which he established in 1906 and edited until 1925. In 1926 Dr. Schmidt was appointed by the Holy Father director of the new Lateran Museum for Missionary Science and Ethnology in Rome.

3. Regarding Buddhism, the number of its adherents has been greatly exaggerated. It is not permissible to count the followers of Confucius and the Taôists of China among the Buddhists.¹⁸18Cfr. E. Hardy, Der Buddhismus, new ed., Münster i. W., 1919, pp. 4 sq.; W. S. Lilly, Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, London, 1885, p. 104. We must also take into consideration the fact that the population of China has been considerably over-estimated.¹⁹19Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, Vol. 65 (1903), p. 204. In the light of more recent and seemingly reliable statistics the total number of Buddhists amounts, not to 500,000,000, but to something like 120,000,000, and even these 120,000,000 do not constitute a clearly defined religious body with uniform doctrines and usages.²⁰20Cfr. L. de la Vallée Poussin in Lectures on the History of Religions (C.T.S.), London, 1910, Vol. I, “Buddhism.” Wherever Buddhism had gained a foothold, as in Ceylon, Tibet, China, and Japan, it has accommodated itself to the existing religious beliefs of the people. While it is true that Buddhism was originally atheistic, it is equally true that, in view of man’s natural need of God and religion, this sect was not able to preserve its primitive character. Belief in God always reasserted itself, even though only in an imperfect, polytheistic form. The great mass of the common people returned to their primitive belief in the life beyond, regarded Nirvâna as a paradise of delight, and worshipped Buddha as the supreme lord of heaven.²¹21O. Wecker, Christlicher Einfluss auf den Buddhismus, in the Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen, 1910, pp. 444 sqq.; Chas. F. Aiken in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, pp. 28 sqq.; IDEM, The Dhamma of Gotama the Buddha and the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, Boston, 1900; W. S. Lilly, op. cit. (note 18), pp. 36 sqq.; E. R. Hull, S.J., Archaic Religions, Bombay, 1913, pp. 139 sqq.; P. Sinthern, S.J., Buddhismus und Buddhistische Strömungen in der Gegenwart, Münster i. W., 1905. Thus in the minds of most of its adherents Buddhism is no longer an atheistic system and cannot, therefore, be cited as an argument against the universality of religion.

4. Nor is our thesis disproved by the fact that atheism is rampant in the Occident. Positive unbelief is confined to a few and has by no means penetrated the masses. It flourishes for the most part among the young and immature, whose vision is blurred by passion and moral aberrations.²²22Cfr. F. Paulsen, System der Ethik, Vol. I, 9th ed., Berlin, 1913, p. 424; Esser-Mausbach, Religion, Christentum, Kirche, Vol. I, 5th ed., Kempten, 1923, pp. 68 sqq.—Kneller (Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, Engl. tr. by Kettle, p. 394) observes: “Lichtenberg says somewhere that in society he often professed to be an atheist, exercitii gratia. Sebastian Brunner, a man of great insight and experience,—relates that while in his youth he was wont to scoff at those of his comrades who were openly pious, he none the less never failed to say the prayers ‘in his little prayer-book,’ morning and evening, and he adds that on enquiry he found this to be a very common ‘psychological phenomenon.’ (G. Lichtenberg’s Vermischte Schriften, Vol. I, Göttingen, 1867, 15; S. Brunner, Woher und Wohin? III, 94). If this was the case in Brunner’s day, still more is it so in ours; unbelief is the ruling fashion, and to confess one’s faith in Jesus Christ and His Church is to ensure bitter criticism and contempt. It needs courage to stand out against so strong a current of opinion. But in spite of this ‘psychological phenomenon,’ it is a fact as firmly established as any observation of science, that mankind in general has ever been on the side of belief, and that religion has its root deep in the core of the human heart. The mass of humanity gives way readily to superstition, but not to scepticism. The Cagliostros, Saint-Germains, and Mesmers of the 18th century, the table-turners and spiritists of the 19th are a conclusive proof of this. Man is naturally religious in mind and heart; and the blatant unbelief of the newspapers and the popularizers springs from no profound and ingrained conviction. A great part of it, at least, must be regarded as a mere current fashion, a phenomenon not of philosophy, but of ‘good tone.’” On the possibility of atheism see Pohle-Preuss, God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, pp. 49 sqq., with bibliography. Most of them adopt saner ideas as they grow older and learn from experience. Convinced atheists are rare exceptions and serve but to confirm the rule that all men are by nature religious.

§ II. The Universality of Religion as a Proof of Its Objective Truth

For a really conclusive argument in favor of the objective truth of religion we must turn to philosophy, which demonstrates beyond doubt that God exists and that man is dependent upon Him as the creature upon its Creator.²³23Jos. Hontheim, S.J., Theodicea, Freiburg, 1926, pp. 282 sqq.; G. H. Joyce, S.J., Principles of Natural Theology, London, 1923, pp. 439 sqq. We presuppose this demonstration here and shall merely attempt to show how it is confirmed by the fact that religion is found among all the nations of the earth.

The universality of religion proves that religious thought and practice have a basis of objective truth.

Although men had every reason for trying to escape the duties imposed on them by religion, they have acknowledged those duties theoretically and practically in every age. Such a universal acknowledgment, under such circumstances, would not be possible unless religion were based on objective truth; therefore, the religious thought and practice of mankind is based upon objective truth.

We regard the universality of religion as a proof of its objective truth, not only because men have always and everywhere believed in the existence of higher beings, to whom they owed submission, but also and above all things for the reason that religion retained its universal dominion in spite of the onerous duties which it imposed, and in spite of man’s keen desire to evade these duties.

Per se the universality of an opinion or of a conviction does not guarantee its truth. For many centuries men believed that the sun moved around the earth, and yet we know to-day that this is not so. The circumstances under which a belief or an opinion gained universal credence must be taken into consideration. These circumstances in the present case justify us in regarding the universality of religion as a proof of its objective truth. Religion with its influence permeates all conditions of life, and it could not have held its own if the notion of God had not irresistibly forced itself upon the mind and compelled man to acknowledge the existence of a supernatural Being which completely dominates him and leads him to perfection. The thought that this was a most important question, upon the correct solution of which depended the lasting welfare of the individual as well as of society at large, must have been a constant incentive for the human mind to examine the objective basis of religion and its claims to acceptance. Had the postulates of religion proved to be unfounded, most assuredly belief in God and divine worship would have long since perished from the earth. The constant and universal persistence of religion amid the most untoward surroundings is an irrefutable proof that it has a solid basis of objective truth and that to deny this would be contrary to reason and human nature.²⁴24Cfr. Le Roy, The Religion of the Primitives, pp. 302 sqq.

For further reading, see page 128.