Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/29

 Presidential A ddress. 1 7

counteract the immoral character which natives acquire by associating^ with Angrlo-Saxon Christians." He thinks that the conception of a Creator thus formed is original, or is very early, and that it has been succeeded by conceptions which are less noble ; and he accounts for this by a recurrence to the " old degeneration theory." Advancing social conditions, he says, compelled men into degeneration. Granting a relatively pure starting point, degeneration from it must accompany every step of civilisation to a certain distance.

Mr. Hartland, in his address last year, dealt with this subject at length in a masterly manner, and I should not again refer to it except for the consideration that the degeneration theory to which Mr. Lang has reverted seems to imply a contradiction of the general law of continuity which we expect to find ruling in matters of religion as much as in other matters. It sounds almost a paradox to say, as Mr. Lang does, that progress in civilisation neces- sarily involves degeneration in religion. What he has said in answer to criticisms on his work, " I doubt if we have a single ethical or religious idea which the lowest savages do not possess among their ideas" ( F. L. x. 43) is, perhaps, profoundly true ; but if it is true of the " lowest savages," it must be equally true of all mankind. These dim surmises of a germinal Supreme Being cannot have been altogether lost, but will surely develop as other ideas develop.

In his original inquiry into the beliefs of the Australian aborigines in the first edition of his work, Mr. Lang had not before him the collections made by Mr. Curr from the reports of local observers, and he does not appear to have used them in the preparation of the second edition. It may be interesting to see how far they confirm his views. Many of them are simply negative, and these we are justified in disregarding, for there can be no proof of a negative. Others are more in point. Thus, Mr. Foelsche said of the beliefs of the Larrakia tribe at Port Darwin, " A VOL. xiii. c