Every people, every man, believing these two things, is religious, and observation shows more and more clearly every day the universality of this character.
Like intelligence and morality, religious feeling has, moreover, its several degrees and manifestations. To seek for these manifestations, to determine their nature and intensity in the various human groups, must be the task of the anthropologist. In order to be faithful to the modern method, he must neglect nothing. Sometimes the most rudimentary religion will have for him a greater interest than one which is fully developed, because it exposes more clearly the primary religious elements. In their progressive development, in the harmony or discord existing between this development and that of the intelligence or morality, he will find many characteristic features suitable for distinguishing races, and sometimes their sub-divisions.
V. The point of view taken by the naturalist differs, then, in certain respects, from that which has hitherto been adopted by the greater number of eminent men, who have endeavoured to establish the Science of religions. Even M. Émile Burnouf, who has so clearly characterised this new science, who has shown so admirably in what respects it differs from theology, who has so justly insisted upon the necessity of enlarging the area of studies of this kind, and of no longer confining ourselves to the beliefs of ancient and modern Europeans, seems to me to have yielded to the prejudices which he opposes.
In fact, this author divides religions into great and small. The former in his opinion are: Christianity, Judaism, Mahomedanism, Brahmanism, and Buddhism. He turns his attention to these only, leaving all others in the background. M. Burnouf may, it is true, argue from the relative number of adherents.
The following are, in fact, from the latest researches of M. Hubner, the general religious statistics of the globe.
| Christians, 400 millions. | { Catholics | 200 | millions. |
| { Protestants | 110 | ” | |
| { Greeks | 80 | ” | |
| { Various sects | 10 | ” | |
| Non-Christians, 992½ millions. | { Buddhists | 500 | ” |
| { Brahminists | 150 | ” | |
| { Mahomedans | 80 | ” | |
| { Israelites | 6½ | ” | |
| { Known different religions | 240 | ” | |
| { Unknown religions | 16 | ” | |
| ——— | |||
| Total | 1392½ | ” |
The same author gives about one thousand as the number of the religions or sects into which mankind is divided. The majority is unquestionably greatly on the side of the small religions, which present, at least in certain respects, a variety of conception equal, if not superior, to all that has been observed in the great. M. Burnouf acts, therefore, like the naturalist, who would form his judgment upon the animal kingdom from the vertebrata alone, and would neglect all the rest, that is to say, three-fourths of the fundamental, and a very considerable number of the secondary types.
Without even mentioning Christianity, the great religions of M. Burnouf are doubtless of interest to us in many respects, on account of the relations which many of them present with the beliefs of almost all Europeans, and also from the historical, social, and political importance of the nations by whom they are professed. But considerations of this kind are far from being everything in science. Mammifers are of much more use to us than worms or zoophytes: yet the zoologist takes as much interest in the latter as in the former; and it becomes more evident every day how useful, and often how necessary the study of these simplified organisms is, for the better understanding of the more complex organisms of higher animals.
The examination of the small religions will render an analogous service to the science of the great religions. It will be, perhaps, amongst the former that we shall be forced to seek the origin of those beliefs which now include so many millions of men; under one form or another, we shall, doubtless, often meet with traces of them side by side with, or even in the midst of the most fully developed religions, and those which are apparently most widely separated from them. Upon these two points our opinions will not I think clash with those of M. Burnouf and Sir John Lubbock.
VI. The latter, in his Origins of Civilization, has, in fact, endeavoured to trace the gradual development of religion in the inferior human races. Unfortunately, he seems to me to have, as a rule, undervalued the greater number of these conceptions, and to have ignored the remarkably elevated character which many of them exhibit. This alone may have led him to consider religion as proportional to civilization, and developing only with the latter. I cannot share this view; and the disagreement between Lubbock and myself is also due in a great measure to the importance which I have attached to certain evidences which seem to have escaped the notice of the English savant. A few examples will justify these observations.