Aging & Wisdom Quote by Arthur Keith

Arthur Keith’s line reads like a casual correction, but it’s really a turf war over origins. By insisting that “universalism” is older than Christianity, he’s not praising the faith’s moral ambitions; he’s repossessing them. The phrasing is telling: “as old as nay” (likely a slip for “as old as anything”) performs offhand certainty, the kind of breezy authority scientists of Keith’s era often used when stepping into cultural history. It’s less an argument than a signal that the speaker believes the matter is settled by comparative antiquity.

The intent sits at the crossroads of early 20th-century anthropology and the politics of prestige. Keith, writing in an age fascinated by “primitive” religions and the evolutionary story of morals, is pushing back against the idea that Christianity holds a unique patent on universal human concern. The subtext: if universalism predates Christianity, then Christianity is an inheritor, not an inventor; its ethical claims can be explained as the latest expression of deeper human social instincts rather than divine revelation.

That move matters because it re-centers moral authority in nature and history, not doctrine. It’s also a subtle leveling gesture: universalism becomes a human project with many ancestors, not a civilizational breakthrough that arrives fully formed in one tradition. Keith’s scientist persona does cultural work here, laundering a philosophical claim through the rhetoric of “age” and “ancientness,” as if chronology alone can dislodge theological exceptionalism.