The Description of Religion

covered a group of people devoid of religion. But always on closer investigation it has been ascertained that there are some cult ceremonies or practices, some meager beginnings of a religion with which the observer had neglected to reckon. Nor does human history record a time, be it never so remote, when men lived their lives without experiencing the need and achieving some forms answering to their felt need of a religion. The oldest available documents, inscriptions, and other monuments go to show that religion was often a much more inclusive and absorbing subject among the ancients than it is for many modern people. It is true that the lines of demarcation between religious phenomena and other social facts are much more vague among less cultured peoples. Yet for that very reason it is possible to appreciate all the more the fact that, among all people and in all the stages of human history religion is a fact with which we must take account. It is not difficult to account for the fact that some peoples have been accounted to be destitute of religion. The explanation is to be found in the presuppositions of those who have pronounced judgment. The inclusiveness or exclusiveness with which the phenomena are treated is determined by the scope of one's definition of religion. It is possible to have a definition so broad that it will include all the social facts of experience, morality, politics, recreation, and in short everything in which the group is trying to achieve or conserve something that it regards as worthful. For such a definition the political mass meeting, harangued to excitement by an agitator, and the football match, with its surging