Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/191

 Rh was always answered negatively except by natives who had been under the influence of missionaries. "No! they say firmly, he is not what you call good; he lets things go too much, he cares about himself only, and I have heard him called "lazy too much, bad person for business," and a dozen things of that kind." Now, if Anyambie's character were loftier, the chief might not so readily enter into conversation with him.

The difficulty of entering into formal relation with the Maker may be overcome, or rather avoided, by the introduction of intermediaries between man and the Almighty. It is quite probable that religious rites first appeared in connection with the belief in spirits very near to man; the closer to him, the more readily would he enter into practical relations with them, as he would with a great and powerful man. The practices of placing food in the graves, of making a fire near them, of placing hunting or fighting implements in them, not in the expectation of profit, but simply out of humane feeling, are probably prototypes of the earlier religious offerings and sacrifices.

The Maker, though not worshipped and propitiated so early as the lower gods, nevertheless exercises from the first an influence at times profound and often the most ennobling known to the primitive mind. In this connection one should remember Howitt's statement concerning the All Father of the South-Eastern Australians. He is, we are told,