Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/72

46 at least a sketch of that kind in Mr. Brough Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria.

Rejoinder.

BY E. S. HARTLAND.

The demolition of my criticisms has “taken such a deal of doing,” that my rejoinder must, from considerations of space, be brief. Leaving minor issues, and avoiding as far as possible mere verbal discussions, therefore, I shall only touch on the principal points.

I note that Mr. Lang now adopts Professor Starr’s statement of his case that “among” man’s “earliest original conceptions is the idea of a kind, creative Supreme Being whom men may worship.” This is a material variation from the hypothesis stated on p. 331 of The Making of Religion, and quoted by me (Folklore, vol. ix., p. 293), that “there are two chief sources of religion: (1) the belief ... in a powerful, moral, eternal, omniscient Father and Judge of men; (2) the belief ... in somewhat of man which may survive the grave,” with the latter of which I was not dealing. The present statement is not only less definite, but it does not exclude other and contemporaneous religious beliefs. I cannot here examine the general question as to man’s “earliest original conceptions” of deity, which is outside the issue I was debating, namely, the accuracy of Mr. Lang’s presentation of the “High Gods” of the Australians. It is the less necessary to do so, because Mr. Lang himself adopts the same phraseology with regard to the present Australians, contending “that the notion of a kind, creative Supreme Being is among the ideas of the Australians.”

Mr. Lang admits that his use of rhetorical expressions was unwise, excusing himself, however, by saying that it was “partly a matter of capital letters and Latinised words.” True, but by no means the whole truth. What is apt to mislead in The Making of Religion (all the latter half of it) is the choice of words associated with the theological