A notable early attempt to develop a more technical--rather than relying on a common or folk--definition of religion as a universal human feature was that of the nineteenth-century anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) in his influential book, Primitive Culture (1871, 2 vols.; reprinted today as Religion in Primitive Culture). A "rudimentary definition of religin," he said, "seems best to fall back at once on this essential source ... belief in Spiritual Beings.* In this minimalist definition we see the still common emphasis on religion as an essentially private, intellectual activity (that is, religion equals believing in this or that) rather than an emphasis on, for example, the behavioral or the social components, as in Emile Durkheim's (1858-1917) emphasis on public ritual and institution in his still influential sociological study, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). As stated in Durkheim's often quoted definition: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them.... In showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing."* For Tylor, religion was an eminently private (intellectual) thing.

In Tylor's onetime popular definition we find the remnants of a philosophically idealist era in European history, when one's membership within certain groups was thought to be primarily dependent upon whether one believed in something (for example, the claims made in a creed or in a pledge of allegiance), rather than membership being the result of collective behaviors, such as a group of soldiers saluting a flag or people standing in unison to sing a national anthem (as argued in Durkheim's work). In fact, this presumption still persists today, insomuch as the institutions some scholars of religion refer to as "the cumulative tradition" are thought to be a somewhat deadened (that is, unreflective, automatic, etc.) behavioral expression of a prior, dynamic affectation often known as "faith" or "belief" (e.g., see Wilfred Cantwell Smith's classic 1962 work, The Meaning and End of Religion). We can easily find something like this distinction in popular culture today, in which people regularly distinguish between something they call spirituality and the institution of religion. "I'm not religious," they say, "I'm spiritual"--translation: I do not participate in unthinking ritual and pointless institution but, instead, participate in an inner, personal quest. That such people did not come up with this on their own, let alone originate the particular path on which they say they are traveling, indicates that they too are part of long established traditions and institutions with rituals of their own--such as saying "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." It's just that they are participating in a different and more than likely competing tradition, requiring devices to distinguish and authorize it.

With its emphasis on the intellectual or cognitive component (along with such other early scholars as Herbert Spencer [1820- 1903], F. Max Müller [1823-1900], and James G. Frazer [1854-1941], Tylor is numbered among a group today called the Intellectualists, a nineteenth-century anthropological tradition), Tylor's work offers an example of a classic definitional strategy: essentialism. Because the social movements classified as religions struck such observers as obviously having a number of different outward characteristics, many of which were explained away as mere historical accidents (i.e., the result of specific cultural or geographic context), they thought it unwise to define religion based on what they took to be its secondary, external aspects. Instead, like many others, Tylor reasoned that one ought to identify "the deeper motive which underlies them." Belief in spiritual beings, he concluded, was just such a deeper motive; in fact, he concluded that it was the "essential source" for all religions. Accordingly, his naturalistic theory of religion sought to account for the universal belief in spiritual beings (a theory known as Animism). We therefore refer to Tylor's definition as essentialist (sometimes also termed substantivist or monothetic): it identifies the one essential feature (or substance) without which something would not be what it is.

In other words, if, as the German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) once argued in his influential book, The Idea of the Holy (1917), that which sets religions apart is the participant's feeling of awe and fascination when in the presence of what Otto termed the mysterium tremendum (the compelling yet repelling mystery of it all), then without this sense of awe and fascination there is no religion. This feeling of utter awe (a complex combination of fear, trembling, fascination, and attraction) was, for Otto, the essence of religion--something that could only be apprehended fully by the participant (who had the emic perspective). For the late eighteenth-century German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher the essence was "a feeling of absolute dependence"; for the early twentieth-century Dutch phenomenologist of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw, it was "power"; for the early twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich it was "an ultimate concern"; for the late nineteenth-century psychologist of religion, William James, it was an experience peculiar to so-called "religious geniuses" that, once expressed, taught, reproduced, and, finally, institutionalized, was prone to deteriorate; and for the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, it was the experience of the Sacred--which he defined as "not the profane."

Although Tylor's classic definition differs significantly from all of these others (insomuch as his anthropological, or etic, perspective aimed first to document and then to explain the cause of such beliefs, whereas the others all presumed that the object of the belief existed independently of believers, thus prompting their responses), all of these scholars went about the task of definition in the same manner: the inductive method was used, whereby one compares a number of empirical examples, looking for their underlying similarity. We see here the common strategy of employing the comparative method to identify non-empirical commonality, such that certain types of all too obvious difference are understood to be nonessential features of contingent history--an approach characteristic of a number of scholars, from Frazer's multi-volume The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1st edition 1890) to Mircea Eliade's (1907-1986) classic work, Patterns in Comparative Religion (1949). Today, this approach is most evident in the work of scholars of religion who attempt to identify the deep similarities among the world's religions--an effort that generally goes by the name of religious pluralism or inter-religious dialogue (e.g., Martin Marty and Diana Eck). Thus, the study of religion, at least as carried out by some contemporary scholars, is an exercise in identifying what is asserted by some to be a deeply human, and thus humane, element--sometimes called the Human Spirit or Human Nature. Based on this presumably shared item, feeling, or value, mutual understanding across cultural and historical differences and divides is believed to be possible; after all, studying "their" sacred symbols, narrative, or practices inevitably strikes a chord with "us" (e.g., the cross-cultural comparative work of Wendy Doniger).

Much as with a light switch that can either be on or off--there's no such thing as a light being only partially on--essentialist definitions lead one to name something as religion if, and only if, it possesses a certain quality. That just what characterizes this essential quality differs (sometimes dramatically, as evidenced above) from one essentialist to another ought not to be overlooked.