Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/560

 5 1 8 Reviews.

At last, in Germany, K. Breysig, in criticising P. Ehrenreich, (who discovered me,) styled me "cet Ecossais, aussi parfaitement capricieux que spirituel." But K. Breysig did not examine my evidence ! Moved, as early as 1902, and again in 1904, by Dr. L. de Schroeder, Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Vienna, Pere Schmidt made the acquaintance of my book, and pursued the subject with energy, and with the aid of his very extensive erudition, — for example, his knowledge of savage languages, and of the Pygmsean peoples.

This personal explanation is almost necessary, for Pere Schmidt devotes fifty-two pages of his work, (pp. 72-124), to a statement of "Ze Preanimisme mojiotheistique d^ Andrew Lang."

The terms preanimis7ne monotheistique scarcely express my notions. As Mr. Tylor says, " the assignation of the distinctive attributes of Deity to none save the Supreme Creator," is monotheism " in the strict sense," and " in this strict sense no savage tribe of monotheists has ever been known." Very few monotheistic peoples, " in the strict sense " very few, if even any at all, have ever been known. I do not think that I ever ascribed to any savage tribe, or to the masses of any European people, a religion which is monotheistic " in the strict sense " of the philosopher. What I did hold, and do hold, is that " shadowings quaint or majestic" of a most superior, noti-a?timtstic, often ethical Father and Master and Maker are a very widely diffused element in savage and barbaric beliefs, and that this element is the germ of the most advanced monotheistic creeds. It is desirable that adversaries should criticise, in detail, the testimony, early, modern, and daily accruing, to the fact of the existence, (in various degrees), of the belief. Such criticism is a very considerable task ; the adversary must undertake it before he can prove that my opinion is, in Mr. A. R. Brown's words, "an elaborate misinterpretation" of the evidence. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to examine the evidence !

Pere Schmidt states my scantlings of evidence, with additions from later sources, such as Mr. Strehlow's work on the Aranda and Loritja. He is most copious as regards both materials and criticism in his critique of my theory, (pp. 125-244). Here he deals with the views of Messrs. Howitt, Tylor, Hartland, Foy,