Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/320

 292 But as matter of anthropological controversy Mr. Lang's second ground of quarrel with current theories is far the more important, for here he directly traverses the scheme as set forth in his opening paragraph. He boldly alleges not merely that gods were not developed out of "ghosts or other spiritual existences fashioned on the same lines," but that the conception of a "relatively Supreme Being" was reached by "men in very rudimentary social conditions," and that "the idea of God in its earliest known shape" had nothing to do with that of spirit. The opinions against which the polemic is here directed are chiefly those of Professor Tylor and Mr. Herbert Spencer. But there are many anthropologists who, while admitting that at a certain level of civilisation the worship of the spirits of the dead has shot up and overshadowed all other forms of religion, yet utterly decline to see in that worship the beginning of religion. They hold that, in spite of the darkness which enshrouds the primitive past of mankind, it is possible to obtain glimpses of an earlier time when man had not attained to the conception of a disembodied spirit, when, conscious himself of will and sensation and reason, he endowed everything round him with those qualities. They do not believe that the idea of God has arisen from that of a ghost or disembodied spirit of a dead man. They agree with Mr. Lang that the evidence will not warrant such a conclusion. With much of this argument, therefore, they have no quarrel. Where they differ from him is in his assertion of a moral, relatively Supreme Being, a Creator, as known to "men in very rudimentary social conditions."

It may be worth while to spend a little time, for the sake of the importance of the subject, and of the undoubted weight of Mr. Lang's authority as an anthropologist, in considering his evidence on this point. In the following pages I propose to deal in detail with so much as relates to the Australian race, leaving the rest for some future opportunity.