Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/460

 424 Lord Avebury on Marriage,

religion scientifically. Thus Lord Avebury (p. 207) quotes Thevet (1558), who says of a Canadian tribe "as to their religion, they have no worship or prayer to God. . . . For the rest, they fully believe there is a Creator . . . who holds all in his power." Lord Avebury calls these " inconsistent,, and contradictory statements; belief in a Great Spirit, but not in a God ; belief in a supernatural being, but no attempt to secure his protection and assistance " (p. 207). Now Thevet, as quoted, says nothing of a " Great Spirit " ; he avoids "that misleading error" as Mr. Howitt terms it. My Making of Religion made an effort to clear that error out of our studies, except, of course, in any instances where an uncontaminated people describes its superior being as a "spirit." The term "Great Spirit" is almost always an European blunder.

To conclude, it is a curious fact that Lord Avebury, for all that I can see, might easily agree with Mr. Tylor and myself, on the points where we hold the same opinions. Lord Avebury writes (p. 154), — "If he," (the savage) "is asked, or if he asks himself, who made the world, it is a simple explanation, however unsupported by evidence, that his ancestor or some other mysterious being did so ; and then we are told that he believes in an all-powerful Creator ! " Well, a mysterious being who made the world is a Creator, of no limited power. To make the world is " a large order."

But let us take the case as Lord Avebury puts it, — it is my own case ; as far as I can make a conjecture. I wrote {Making of Religion, p. x, 1900), — "As soon as man had the idea of 'making' things, he might conjecture as to a Maker of things which he himself had not made, and could not make. He would regard this unknown Maker as 'a magnified non-natural man ' . . . This conception of a magnified non-natural man, who is a Maker, being given ; his Power would be recognised, and fancy would clothe one who had made such useful things with certain other moral