Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/189

 Rh way as ghosts, the Maker could hardly preserve his identity and his high attributes. A confusion must have taken place, and as the common is more easily understood and retained than the unusual, the lofty attributes of the High God conceived by the primitive philosophers became obscured and to him were attributed meaner traits originally belonging to lower gods. One may thus admit that, even in the absence of any real degeneration of a community, the oldest conception of the Maker was the noblest, provided a limited and specific historical period is considered. When this period of absorption and incubation is past, philosophers and seers again appear, who enlarge the reigning conceptions, charge them with higher worth, and return them to the people, who degrade them anew in the travail of their own elevation.

The fact that to many has seemed unaccountable, namely, that the Maker and All Father is not among early people an object of worship, while lower beings are prayed to and propitiated, seems to me just what would be expected of human nature. It is true that a Maker seems the being best qualified to become a God, since he possesses the necessary power and greatness, and must be, on the whole, benevolently inclined towards those whom he has created, and since man can hardly fail to feel his dependence upon a being from whom he proceeds; whereas the mysterious beings springing from human lineage, ghosts and low spirits, have not originally all the qualities required of a divinity. They must first be magnified and exalted if they are to inspire the religious attitude. Under these circumstances, the speedy appearance of religious practices addressed to the High God would seem unavoidable. Why then is he not sooner worshipped? Because his very greatness and remoteness stand as an obstacle in the way of practical religion, while ordinary spirits and great ancestors, more familiar and closer to man than a Maker, call forth more readily those methods of propitiation and