Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/66

 40 Virginians (1611). Okeus, the deputy of Ahone, had idols; Ahone had none. As a rule, the otiose supreme being of more advanced races has none. He comes from an age before idols. Of omnipotence and omniscience I have already said what I have to say.

As to moral qualities: the Being has no sacrifices, because he "has not the chance." But this is continued from old times, as a rule, where he has the chance, as I show in many cases of higher peoples who do sacrifice to their minor deities, but not to the chief of them. Does the Australian God "set the example of sinning"? Has he the vices of Zeus? One myth to that effect is cited, in the case of Bunjil. It is an ætiological myth of the origin of the pecularities of certain birds; such myths are "told to the picaninnies," among the Kurnai. But, if a thousand such tales are told, Zeus protects Homeric morality, despite his own mythology, and I speak of what I call the "religious" aspect. Where Daramulun devours boys, we are not engaged with Daramulun as the supreme being, as I have remarked a dozen times, and Zeus had cannibal sacrifices after the Christian era (Myth, Ritual and Religion, i. ch. ix. Many examples.) Mr. Hartland can scarcely be ignorant of these Greek human sacrifices, which, on the strength of the myth of Tantalus, he courteously credits Zeus with "repudiating." Concerning the Australian Being's sanction of morality, so often denied by eminent men of science, I prove my point.

As to the origin of morality, I have no space for an essay. My introduction of the Decalogue was meant merely to show the analogies between rudimentary and accomplished ethics. The old men, in Australia, are groupfathers (if we speak of the Fifth Commandment), but I do not insist on this. To say "obey them" is equivalent to