work of politics. If Christianity originated from Moses, then all the peoples before this time would have had pagan religions, religions that were older than Christianity. This would further imply that there is no one underlining religion whose traces can be found in all the peoples of the world. This, which goes against Lafitau's "system", would make it possible for atheists to attack the Christianity's claim of being the "one true religion". Lafitau strove to find these traces of degenerated faith in a hope of proving his theory of unitary faith and unitary humanity. Stages of development Lafitau believed that all cultures change over time, and that they will eventually reach the European level of civility. The Native Americans, according to him, were at a lower stage of development than the Europeans. They were at the same stage as the peoples of the Ancient Times, hence their customs could be juxtaposed with the disregard of time and place. This is the basis out of which his method emerges. What sets Lafitau apart from his predecessors and contemporaries, was the formulation of his method of reciprocal illumination. By juxtaposing one type of behavior, or a set of beliefs and customs, to those of other cultures who have reached the same level of developmental history, their similarities and differences would reveal information about both. For example, Lafitau describes the process of making celts by Native Americans, i.e. crude axes, by rubbing flint and rock against abrasive sandstone. This empirical information can then be juxtaposed against the European belief that relics similar to those were "thunder stones" deposited by bolts of lightning. Based on the empirical knowledge it can be extrapolated that the "thunder stones" were not deposited by lightning, rather they were made and used by the Gallic hunters, much in the same way as Native Americans use Celts. In Lafitau's words: Symbolic Theology According to Anthony Pagden, Lafitau argued for the possibility of translating all human behavior, especially religious, into a language which he called "Symbolic Theology", which would explain the universal cultural patterns such as marriage, government and religion. To achieve this, Lafitau emphasized the factual account of the evidence. By using field observations of the "savage" (Lafitau's contemporary "savage"), he would compare them to the historical sources, on the peoples from antiquity. In so doing, Lafitau strove to reveal an underlining cultural pattern; a universal human culture and universal