SINCE the time of Bossuet’s ‘Histoire Universelle,’ as Burnouf
points out,1 many have supposed the various forms of religion to
be but corruptions of an original revelation. The Platonic doctrine
of reminiscence was resuscitated after a fashion, and employed
to explain the apparently inexplicable. If the Greek philosopher
thought that man’s sublimer moments were simply faint
memories of a former pure state, the earlier modern investigators
of the “science of religion” believed, similarly, that faith and
worship were adaptations of a “primordial revelation.” On this
theory it would not be difficult to form a comparative estimate of
any given religious system. For, if at the outset of the inquiry a
deus ex machina be assumed, it is easy to deal with even the most
formidable problems. But, unfortunately, the opinion of Bossuet
and those who think with him is no longer tenable. Religion is
progressing towards a pure manifestation rather than looking back
with more or less distorted vision. Had a specific revelation been
planted on this earth at the first, and left to take its chance, so to
speak, then of the “Three Reverences”2 the first alone would have
been possible.