Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/183

 Rh (4) When several gods existed side by side, fusion and confusion of their characteristics could hardly be avoided: to a deified ancestor may have been ascribed the attributes of a creator, and to a creator the role of an ancestor; a non-moral nature-divinity may have been raised above the natural phenomenon to which it owed its origin, and become, as among the old Aryans, creator and governor of the world. An interaction of god-ideas of different origin,—and therefore of different nature,—is one of the fundamental facts to be taken into account by the student of the origin of religion.

It is for the anthropologist and the historian to discover what, in any particular case, has actually happened in these four respects, and to determine the origin or origins of any particular god. They will have to say, for instance, why Shintoism is a cult addressed exclusively to ancestral spirits, to family and national ancestors, while the other god-ideas have remained unknown to the Japanese, or have been suppressed under the influence of circumstances favourable to the worship of ancestors. It was otherwise with the Aryans. Their imagination was captured by ideas of nature-gods, sun, fire, storms, etc. The richness and versatility of the Greek mind provided that wonderful race with a pantheon composed of ancestor-gods, creator-gods, and nature-gods. Why these differences? As to the psychologist, he may regard his task as completed when he has pointed out the several possible origins of the god-ideas, the characteristics of each, and the nature of the causes which determine the dominance of particular gods.

I close this paper with an illustration of the usefulness of the principles I have just set forth in solving a different problem in the history of early religion.

It is an old opinion that even the lowest savage entertains a belief in a Supreme Being, however dimly conceived and little reverenced. This view was originally based quite