The Making of Religion Part 26

As is common, the future life is attested, not only by dreams, but in the experience of men who 'have died' and come back to life, like Secret Pipe Chief, who told the story to Mr. Grinnell. These visions in a state of apparent death are not peculiar to savages, and, no doubt, have had much effect on beliefs about the next world.[7] Ghosts are rarely seen, but auditory hallucinations, as of a voice giving good advice in time of peril, are regarded as the speech of ghosts. The beasts are also friendly, as fellow children with men of Ti-ra-wa. To the Morning Star the Skidi or Wolf p.a.w.nees offered on rare occasions a captive man. The ceremony was not unlike that of the Aztecs, though less cruel. Curiously enough, the slayer of the captive had instantly to make a mock flight, as in the Attic _Bouphonia_. This, however, was a rite paid to the Morning Star, not to Ti-ra-wa, 'the power above that moves the universe and controls all things.' Sacrifice to Ti-ra-wa was made on rare and solemn occasions out of his two chief gifts, deer and buffalo. 'Through corn, deer, buffalo, and the sacred bundles, we wors.h.i.+p _Ti-ra-wa_.'

The flesh was burned in the fire, while prayers were made with great earnestness. In the old Skidi rite the women told the fattened captive what they desired to gain from the Ruler. It is occasionally said that the human sacrifice was made to _Ti-ra-wa_ himself. The sacrificer not only fled, but fasted and mourned. It is possible that, as among the Aztecs, the victim was regarded as also an embodiment of the G.o.d, but this is not certain, the rite having long been disused. Mr. Grinnell got the description from a very old Skidi. There was also a festival of thanks to Ti-ra-wa for corn. During a sacred dance and hymn the corn is held up to the Ruler by a woman. Corn is ritually called 'The Mother,' as in Peru.[8]

'We are like seed, and we wors.h.i.+p through the Corn.'

Disease is caused by evil spirits, and many American soldiers were healed by p.a.w.nee doctors, though their hurts had refused to yield to the treatment of the United States Army Surgeons.[9]

The miracles wrought by p.a.w.nee medicine men, under the eyes of Major North, far surpa.s.s what is told of Indian jugglery. But this was forty years ago, and it is probably too late to learn anything of these astounding performances of naked men on the hard floor of a lodge.

'Major North told me' (Mr. Grinnell) 'that he saw with his own eyes the doctors make the corn grow,' the doctor not manipulating the plant, as in the Mango trick, but standing apart and singing. Mr. Grinnell says: 'I have never found any one who could even suggest an explanation.'

This art places great power in the hands of the doctors, who exhibit many other prodigies. It is notable that in this religion we hear nothing of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p; all that is stated as to ghosts has been reported. We find the cult of an all-powerful being, in whose ritual sacrifice is the only feature that suggests ghost-wors.h.i.+p. The popular tales and historical reminiscences of the last generation entirely bear out by their allusions Mr. Grinnell's account of the p.a.w.nee faith, in which the ethical element chiefly consists in a sense of dependence on and touching grat.i.tude to Ti-ra-wa, as shown in fervent prayer. Theft he abhors, he applauds valour, he punishes the wicked by annihilation, the good dwell with him in his heavenly home. He is addressed as A-ti-us ta-kaw-a, 'Our father in all places.'

It is not so easy to see how this Being was developed out of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, of which we find no traces among p.a.w.nees. For ancestor-wors.h.i.+p among the Sioux, it is usual to quote a remark of one Prescott, an interpreter: 'Sometimes an Indian will say, "Wah negh on she wan da," which means, "Spirits of the dead have mercy on me." Then they will add what they want. That is about the amount of an Indian's prayer.'[10] Obviously, when we compare Mr. Grinnell's account of p.a.w.nee religion, based on his own observations, and those of Major North, and Mr. Dunbar, who has written on the language of the tribe, we are on much safer ground, than when we follow a contemptuous, half-educated European.

The religion of the Blackfoot Indians appears to be a ruder form of the p.a.w.nee faith. Whether the differences arise from tribal character, or from decadence, or because the Blackfoot belief is in an earlier and more backward condition than that of the p.a.w.nees, it is not easy to be certain.

As in China, there exists a difficulty in deciding whether the Supreme Being is identical with the great nature-G.o.d; in China the Heaven, among the Blackfeet the Sun; or is prior to him in conception, or has been, later, subst.i.tuted for him, or placed beside him. The Blackfoot mythology is low, crude, and, except in tales of Creation, is derisive. As in Australia, there is a specific difference of tone between mythology and religion.

The Blackfoot country runs east from the summit of the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Yellowstone river on the Missouri, then west to the Yellowstone sources, across the Rocky Mountains to the Beaverhead, thence to their summit.

As to spirits, the Blackfeet believe in, or at least tell stories of, ghosts, which conduct themselves much as in our old-fas.h.i.+oned ghost stories. They haunt people in a rather sportive and irresponsible way. The souls or shadows of respectable persons go to the bleak country called the Sand Hills, where they live in a dull, monotonous kind of Sheol. The shades of the wicked are 'earth-bound' and mischievous, especially ghosts of men slain in battle. They cause paralysis and madness, but dread interiors of lodges; they only 'tap on the lodge-skins.' Like many Indian tribes, the Blackfeet have the Eurydice legend. A man grieving for his dead wife finds his way to Hades, is pitied by the dead, and allowed to carry the woman back with him, under certain ritual prohibitions, one of which he unhappily infringes. The range of this deeply touching story among the Red Men, and its close resemblance to the tale of Orpheus, is one of the most curious facts in mythology. Mr. Grinnell's friend Young Bear, when lost with his wife in a fog, heard a Voice, 'It is well. Go on, you are going right.' 'The top of my head seemed to lift up. It seemed as if a lot of needles were running into it.... This must have been a ghost.'

As the wife also heard the Voice it was probably human, not hallucinatory.

Animals receive the usual amount of friendly respect from the Blackfeet.

They have also an inchoate polytheism, 'Above Persons, Ground Persons, and Under Water Persons.' Of the first, Thunder is most important, and is wors.h.i.+pped. There is the Cold Maker, a white figure on a white horse, the Wind, and so on.

The Creator is Na-pi, Old Man; Dr. Brinton thinks he is a personification of Light, but Mr. Grinnell reckons it absurd to attribute so abstract a conception to the Blackfeet. Na-pi is simply a primal Being, an Immortal Man,[11] who was before Death came into the world, concerning which one of the usual tales of the Origin of Death is told. 'All things that he had made understood him when he spoke to them--birds, animals, and people,' as in the first chapters of Genesis. With Na-pi, Creation worked on the lines of adaptation to environment. He put the bighorn on the prairie. There it was awkward, so he set it on rocky places, where it skipped about with ease. The antelope fell on the rocks, so he removed it to the level prairie. Na-pi created man and woman, out of clay, but the folly of the woman introduced Death. Na-pi, as a Prometheus, gave fire, and taught the forest arts. He inculcated the duty of prayer; his will should be done by emissaries in the shape of animals. Then he went to other peoples. The misfortunes of the Indians arise from disobedience to his laws.

Chiefs were elective, for conduct, courage, and charity.

Though weapons and utensils were buried with the dead, or exposed on platforms, and though great men were left to sleep in their lodges, henceforth never to be entered by the living, there is no trace known to me of continued ancestor-wors.h.i.+p. As many Blackfeet change their names yearly, ancestral names are not likely to become those of G.o.ds.

The Sun is by many believed to have taken the previous place of Na-pi in religion; or perhaps Na-pi _is_ the Sun. However, he is still separately addressed in prayer. The Sun receives presents of furs and so forth; a finger, when the prayer is for life, has been offered to him. Fetis.h.i.+sm probably shows itself in gifts to a great rock. There is daily prayer, both to the Sun and to Na-pi. Women inst.i.tute Medicine Lodges, praying, 'Pity me, Sun. You have seen my life. You know that I am pure.' 'We look on the Medicine Lodge woman as you white people do on the Roman Catholic Sisters.' Being 'virtuous in deed, serious, and clean-minded,' the Medical Lodge woman is in spiritual _rapport_ with Na-pi and the Sun. To this extent, at least, Blackfoot religion is an ethical influence.

The creed seems to be a nascent polytheism, subordinate to Na-pi as supreme Maker, and to the personified Sun. As Blackfoot ghosts are 'vaporous, ineffectual' for good, there seems to be nothing like ancestor wors.h.i.+p.

These two cults and beliefs, p.a.w.nee and Blackfoot, may be regarded as fairly well authenticated examples of un-Christianised American religion among races on the borderland of agriculture and the chase. It would be difficult to maintain that ghost-wors.h.i.+p or ancestor-wors.h.i.+p is a potent factor in the evolution of the deathless Ti-ra-wa or the immortal Creator Na-pi, who has nothing of the spirit about him, especially as ghosts are not wors.h.i.+pped.[12]

Let us now look at the Supreme Being of a civilised American people. There are few more interesting accounts of religion than Garcila.s.so de la Vega's description of faith in Peru. Garcila.s.so was of Inca parentage on the spindle side; he was born in 1540, and his book, taken from the traditions of an uncle, and aided by the fragmentary collections of Father Blas Valera, was published in 1609. In Garcila.s.so's theory the original people of Peru, Totemists and wors.h.i.+ppers of hills and streams, Earth and Sea, were converted to Sun wors.h.i.+p by the first Inca, a child of the Sun. Even the new religion included ancestor-wors.h.i.+p and other superst.i.tions. But behind Sun wors.h.i.+p was the faith in a Being who 'advanced the Sun so far above all the stars of heaven.'[13] This Being was Pachacamac, 'the sustainer of the world.' The question then arises, Is Pachacamac a form of the same creative being whom we find among the lowest savages; or is he the result of philosophical reflection? The latter was the opinion of Garcila.s.so. 'The Incas and their Amautas' (learned cla.s.s) 'were philosophers.'[14]

'Pacha,' he says, = universe, and 'cama' = soul. Pachacamac, then, is _Anima Mundi_. 'They did not even take the name of Pachacamac into their mouths,' or but seldom and reverently, as the Australians will not, in religious matters, mention Darumulun. Pachacamac had no temple, 'but they wors.h.i.+pped him in their hearts.' That he was the Creator appears in an earlier writer, cited by Garcila.s.so, Agustin de Zarate (ii. ch. 5).

Garcila.s.so, after denying the existence of temples to Pachacamac, mentions one, but only one. He insists, at length, and with much logic, that He whom, as a Christian, he wors.h.i.+ps, is in Quichua styled Pachacamac.

Moreover, the one temple to Pachacamac was not built by an Inca, but by a race which, having heard of the Inca G.o.d, borrowed his name, without understanding his nature, that of a Being who dwells not in temples made with hands (ii. 186). In the temple this people, the Yuncas, offered even human sacrifices. By the Incas to Pachacamac no sacrifice was offered (ii. 189). This negative custom they also imposed upon the Yuncas, and they removed idols from the Yunca temple of Pachacamac (ii. 190). Yunca superst.i.tions, however, infested the temple, and a Voice gave oracles therein.[15] The Yuncas also had a talking idol, which the Inca, in accordance with a religious treaty, occasionally consulted.

While Pachacamac, without temple or rite, was reckoned the Creator, we must understand that Sun-wors.h.i.+p and ancestor-wors.h.i.+p were the practical elements of the Inca cult. This appears to have been distasteful to the Inca Huayna Ccapac, for at a Sun feast he gazed hard on the Sun, was remonstrated with by a priest, and replied that the restless Sun 'must have another Lord more powerful than himself.'[16]

This remark could not have been necessary if Pachacamac were really an article of living and universal belief. Perhaps we are to understand that this Inca, like his father, who seems to have been the original author of the saying, meant to sneer at the elaborate wors.h.i.+p bestowed on the Sun, while Pachacamac was neglected, as far as ritual went.

In Garcila.s.so's book we have to allow for his desire to justify the creed of his maternal ancestors. His criticism of Spanish versions is acute, and he often appeals to his knowledge of Quichua, and to the direct traditions received by him from his uncle. Against his theory of Pachacamac as a result of philosophical thought, it may be urged that similar conceptions, or nearly similar, exist among races not civilised like the Incas, and not provided with colleges of learned priests. In fact, the position of Pachacamac and the Sun is very nearly that of the Blackfoot Creator Na-pi, and the Sun, or of Shang-ti and the Heaven, in China. We have the Creative Being whose creed is invaded by that of a wors.h.i.+pped aspect of nature, and whose cult, quite logically, is _nil_, or nearly _nil_. There are also, in different strata of the Inca empire, ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, or mummy-wors.h.i.+p, Totemism and polytheism, with a vague ma.s.s of _huaca = Elohim, kalou, wakan._

Perhaps it would not be too rash to conjecture that Pachacamac is not a merely philosophical abstraction, but a survival of a Being like Na-pi or Ahone. Cieza de Leon calls Pachacamac 'a devil,' whose name means 'creator of the world'![17] The name, when it _was_ uttered, was spoken with genuflexions and signs of reverence. So closely did Pachacamac resemble the Christian Deity, that Cieza de Leon declares the devil to have forged and insisted on the resemblance![18] It was open to Spanish missionaries to use Pachacamac, as to the Jesuits among the Bantu to use Mpungu, as a fulcrum for the introduction of Christianity. They preferred to regard Pachacamac as a fraudulent fiend. Now Nzambi Mpungu, among the Bantu, is a.s.suredly not a creation of a learned priesthood, for the Bantu have no learned priests, and Mpungu would be useless to the greedy conjurers whom they do consult, as he is not propitiated. On grounds of a.n.a.logy, then, Pachacamac may be said to resemble a savage Supreme Being, somewhat etherealised either by Garcila.s.so or by the Amautas, the learned cla.s.s among the subjects of the Incas. He does not seem, even so, much superior to the Ahone of the Virginians.

We possess, however, a different account of Inca religion, from which Garcila.s.so strongly dissents. The best version is that of Christoval de Molina, who was chaplain of the hospital for natives, and wrote between 1570 and 1584.[19] Christoval a.s.sembled a number of old priests and other natives who had taken part in the ancient services, and collected their evidence. He calls the Creator ('not born of woman, unchangeable and eternal') by the name Pachayachachi. 'Teacher of the world' and 'Tecsiviracocha,' which Garcila.s.so dismisses as meaningless.[20] He also tells the tale of the Inca Yupanqui and the Lord of the Sun, but says that the Incas had already knowledge of the Creator. To Yupanqui he attributes the erection of a gold image of the Creator, utterly denied by Garcila.s.so.[21] Christoval declares, again contradicted by Garcila.s.so, that sacrifices were offered to the Creator. Unlike the Sun, Christoval says, the Creator had no woman a.s.signed to him, 'because, as he created them, they all belonged to him' (p. 26), which, of course, is an idea that would also make sacrifice superfluous.

Christoval gives prayers in Quichua, wherein the Creator is addressed as _Uiracocha_.

Christoval a.s.signs images, sacrifice, and even human sacrifice, to the Creator Uiracocha. Garcila.s.so denies that the Creator Pachacamac had any of these things, he denies that Uiracocha was the name of the Creator, and he denies it, knowing that the Spaniards made the a.s.sertion.[22] Who is right? Uiracocha, says Garcila.s.so, is one thing, with his sacrifices; the Creator, Pachacamac, without sacrifices, is another, is G.o.d.

Mr. Markham thinks that Garcila.s.so, writing when he did, and not consciously exaggerating, was yet less trustworthy (though 'wonderfully accurate') than Christoval. Garcila.s.so, however, is 'scrupulously truthful.'[23] 'The excellence of his memory is perhaps best shown in his topographical details.... He does not make a single mistake,' in the topography of three hundred and twenty places! A scrupulously truthful gentleman, endowed with an amazing memory, and a master of his native language, flatly contradicts the version of a Spanish priest, who also appears to have been careful and honourable.

I shall now show that Christoval and Garcila.s.so have different versions of the same historical events, and that Garcila.s.so bases his confutation of the Spanish theory of the Inca Creator on his form of this historical tradition, which follows:

The Inca Yahuarhuaccac, like George II., was at odds with his Prince of Wales. He therefore banished the Prince to Chita, and made him serve as shepherd of the llamas of the Sun. Three years later the disgraced Prince came to Court, with what the Inca regarded as a c.o.c.k-and-bull story of an apparition of the kind technically styled 'Borderland.' Asleep or awake, he knew not, he saw a bearded robed man holding a strange animal.

The appearance declared himself as Uiracocha (Christoval's name for the Creator), a Child of the Sun; by no means as Pachacamac, the Creator of the Sun. He announced a distant rebellion, and promised his aid to the Prince. The Inca, hearing this narrative, replied in the tones of Charles II., when he said about Monmouth, 'Tell James to go to h.e.l.l!'[24]

The predicted rebellion, however, broke out, the Inca fled, the Prince saved the city, dethroned his father, and sent him into the country. He then adopted, from the apparition, the throne-name _Uiracocha,_ grew a beard, and dressed like the apparition, to whom he erected a temple, roofless, and unique in construction. Therein he had an image of the G.o.d, for which he himself gave frequent sittings. When the Spaniards arrived, bearded men, the Indians called them Uiracochas (as all the Spanish historians say), and, to flatter them, declared falsely that Uiracocha was their word for the Creator. Garcila.s.so explodes the Spanish etymology of the name, in the language of Cuzco, which he 'sucked in with his mother's milk.' 'The Indians said that the chief Spaniards were children of the Sun, to make G.o.ds of them, just as they said they were children of the apparition, Uiracocha.'[25] Moreover, Garcila.s.so and Cieza de Leon agree in their descriptions of the image of Uiracocha, which, both a.s.sert, the Spaniards conceived to represent a Christian early missionary, perhaps St. Bartholomew.[26] Garcila.s.so had seen the mummy of the Inca Uiracocha, and relates the whole tale from the oral version of his uncle, adding many native comments on the Court revolution described.

To Garcila.s.so, then, the invocations of Uiracocha, in Christoval's collection of prayers, are a native adaptation to Spanish prejudice: even in them Pachacamac occurs.[27]

Now, Christoval has got hold of a variant of Garcila.s.so's narrative, which, in Garcila.s.so, has plenty of humour and human nature. According to Christoval it was not the Prince, later Inca Uiracocha, who beheld the apparition, but the Inca Uiracocha's _son,_ Prince of Wales, as it were, of the period, later the Inca Yupanqui.

Garcila.s.so corrects Christoval. Uiracocha saw the apparition, as Pere Acosta rightly says, and Yupanqui was _not_ the son but the grandson of this Inca Uiracocha.[28] Uiracocha's own son was Pachacutec, which simply means 'Revolution,' 'they say, by way of by-word _Pachamcutin,_ which means "the world changes."'

Christoval's form of the story is peculiarly gratifying in one way.

Yupanqui saw the apparition _in a piece of crystal_, 'the apparition vanished, while the piece of crystal remained. The Inca took care of it, and they say that he afterwards saw everything he wanted in it.' The apparition, in human form and in Inca dress, gave itself out for the Sun; and Yupanqui, when he came to the throne, 'ordered a statue of the Sun to be made, as nearly as possible resembling the figure he had seen in the crystal.' He bade his subjects to 'reverence the new deity, as they had heretofore wors.h.i.+pped the Creator,'[29] who, therefore, was prior to Uiracocha.

Interesting as a proof of Inca crystal-gazing, this legend of Christoval's cannot compete as evidence with Acosta and Garcila.s.so. The reader, however, must decide as to whether he prefers Garcila.s.so's unpropitiated Pachacamac, or Christoval's Uiracocha, human sacrifices, and all.[30]

Mr. Tylor prefers the version of Christoval, making Pachacamac a t.i.tle of Uiracocha.[31] He thinks that we have, in Inca religion, an example of 'a subordinate G.o.d' (the Sun) 'usurping the place of the supreme deity,' 'the rivalry between the Creator and the divine Sun.' In China, as we shall see, Mr. Tylor thinks, on the other hand, that Heaven is the elder G.o.d, and that Shang-ti, the Supreme Being, is the usurper.

The truth in the Uiracocha _versus_ Pachacamac controversy is difficult to ascertain. I confess a leaning toward Garcila.s.so, so truthful and so wonderfully accurate, rather than to the Spanish priest. Christoval, it will be remarked, says that 'Chanca-Uiracocha was a _huaca_ (sacred place) in Chuqui-chaca.'[32] Now Chuqui-chaca is the very place where, according to Garcila.s.so, the Inca Uiracocha erected a temple to 'his Uncle, the Apparition.'[33] Uiracocha, then, the deity who receives human sacrifice, would be a late, royally introduced ancestral G.o.d, no real rival of the Creator, who receives no sacrifice at all, and, as he was bearded, his name would be easily transferred to the bearded Spaniards, whose arrival the Inca Uiracocha was said to have predicted. But to call several or all Spaniards by the name given to the Creator would be absurd. Mr. Tylor and Mr. Markham do not refer to the pa.s.sage in which Christoval obviously gets hold of a wrong version of the story of the apparition.

There is yet another version of this historical legend, written forty years after Christoval's date by Don Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua. He ranks after Garcila.s.so and Christoval, but before earlier _Spanish_ writers, such as Acosta, who knew not Quichua. According to Salcamayhuia, the Inca Uiracocha was like James III., fond of architecture and averse to war. He gave the realm to his b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Urca, who was defeated and killed by the Chancas. Uiracocha meant to abandon the contest, but his legitimate son, Yupanqui, saw a fair youth on a rock, who promised him success in the name of the Creator, and then vanished. The Prince was victorious, and the Inca Uiracocha retired into private life. This appears to be a mixture of the stories of Garcila.s.so and Christoval.[34]

It is not, in itself, a point of much importance whether the Creator was called Uiracocha (which, if it means anything, means 'sea of grease!'), or whether he was called Pachacamac, maker of the world, or by both names.

The important question is as to whether the Creator received even human sacrifices (Christoval) or none at all (Garcila.s.so). As to Pachacamac, we must consult Mr. Payne, who has the advantage of being a Quichua scholar.

He considers that Pachacamac combines the conception of a general spirit of living things with that of a Creator or maker of all things.

'Pachacamac and the Creator are one and the same,' but the conception of Pachayachacic, 'ruler of the world,' 'belongs to the later period of the Incas.'[35] Mr. Payne appears to prefer Christoval's legend of the Inca crystal-gazer, to the rival version of Garcila.s.so. The Yunca form of the wors.h.i.+p of Pachacamac Mr. Payne regards as an example of degradation.[36]

He disbelieves Garcila.s.so's statement, that human sacrifices were not made to the Sun. Garcila.s.so must, if Mr. Payne is right, have been a deliberate liar, unless, indeed, he was deceived by his Inca kinsfolk.

The reader can now estimate for himself the difficulty of knowing much about Peruvian religion, or, indeed, of any religion. For, if Mr. Payne is right about the lowest savages having no conception of G.o.d, or even of spirit, though the idea of a great Creator, a spirit, is one of the earliest efforts of 'primitive logic,' we, of course, have been merely fabling throughout.

Garcila.s.so's evidence, however, seems untainted by Christian attempts to find a primitive divine tradition. Garcila.s.so may possibly be refining on facts, but he asks for no theory of divine primitive tradition in the case of Pachacamac, whom he attributes to philosophical reflection.

In the following chapter we discuss 'the old Degeneration theory,' and contrast it with the scheme provisionally offered in this book. We have already observed that the Degeneration theory bia.s.ses the accounts of some missionaries who are obviously anxious to find traces of a Primitive Tradition, originally revealed to all men, but only preserved in a pure form by the Jews. To avoid deception by means of this bias we have chosen examples of savage creative beings from wide areas, from diverse ages, from non-missionary statements, from the least contaminated backward peoples, and from their secret mysteries and hymns.

Thus, still confining ourselves to the American continent, we have the ancient hymns of the Zunis, in no way Christianised, and never chanted in the presence of the Mexican Spanish, These hymns run thus: 'Before the beginning of the New Making, Awonawilona, the Maker and container of All, the All-Father, solely had being.' He then evolved all things 'by thinking himself outward in s.p.a.ce.' Hegelian! but so are the dateless hymns of the Maoris, despite the savage mythology which intrudes into both sets of traditions. The old fable of Ouranos and Gaia recurs in Zuni as in Maori.[37]

I fail to see how Awonawilona could be developed out of the ghost of chief or conjurer. That in which all things potentially existed, yet who was more than all, is not the ghost of a conjurer or chief. He certainly is not due to missionary influence. No authority can be better than that of traditional sacred chants found among a populace which will not sing them before one of their Mexican masters.

We have tried to escape from the bias of belief in a primitive divine tradition, but bias of every kind exists, and must exist. At present the anthropological hypothesis of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p as the basis, perhaps (as in Mr. Spencer's theory) the only basis of religion, affects observers.

Before treating the theory of Degeneration let us examine a case of the anthropological bias. The Fijians, as we learned from Williams, have ancestral G.o.ds, and also a singular form of the creative being, Ndengei, or, as Mr. Basil Thomson calls him, Degei. Mr. Thomson writes: 'It is clear that the Fijians humanised their G.o.ds, because they had once existed on earth in human form.... Like other primitive people, the Fijians deified their ancestors.' Yet the Fijians 'may have forgotten the names of their ancestors three generations back'! How in the world can you deify a person whom you don't remember? Moreover, only malevolent chiefs were deified, so apparently a Fijian G.o.d is really a well-born human scoundrel, so considerable that _he_ for one is not forgotten--just as if we wors.h.i.+pped the wicked Lord Lyttelton! Of course a G.o.d like Ahone could not be made out of such materials as these, and, in fact, we learn from Mr. Thomson that there are other Fijian G.o.ds of a different origin.