We observe that all nations, barbarous as well as civilized, though separately founded because remote from each other in time and space, keep these three human customs: all have some religion, all contract solemn marriages, all bury their dead. And in no nation, however savage and crude, are any human actions performed with more elaborate ceremonies and more sacred solemnity than the rites of religion, marriage, and burial. For, by the axiom that "uniform ideas, born among peoples unknown to each other, must have a common ground of truth" [144], it must have been dictated to all nations that from these three institutions humanity began among them all, and therefore they must be devoutly guarded by them all, so that the world should not again become a bestial wilderness.
[Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Bergin & Fisch, trs., Cornell (Ithaca, NY: 1976) p. 97, section 333.]
