Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/344

316 Such a story might have been taken out of Ovid. It is mere mythology; but so are the stories of naughty Zeus and Ares, with which, to their disadvantage, Mr. Lang compares Australian theology. A theorist may ignore such tales, and then claim that "the status of theology does not correspond to the status in material and intellectual culture," and that "the popular Zeus or Ares is degenerate from Daramulun." Will the claim bear a moment's inspection?

The reference to Daramulun is particularly unfortunate, for Zeus and Ares are not represented in the popular theology as eaters of human flesh. Zeus, we know, punished Tantalus for setting human flesh before him; he repudiated human sacrifices, and turned Lycaon into a wolf for offering him one. But (not to insist on the emu, at once Daramulun's wife and his food) Daramulun, as we have seen, habitually fed on adolescent youths, and that not in "the popular theology," but in the sacred revelations of the mysteries. In those revelations, too, Baiame's morals are displayed. It was for the loss to himself rather than the deceit practised by Daramulun that he slew him; he expressly commanded a continuance of the deceit towards the women and uninitiated. With such fervour "the God discourages sin, he does not set the example of sinning!"

But what about the precepts inculcated in the mysteries? Mr. Lang quotes the late Professor Huxley as affirming that theology "in its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages," "is wholly independent of ethics" (p. 191). If by theology be meant religion, and not merely mythology, Mr. Lang is right in taking exception to it. For in a low stage of savagery evolution has not yet severed morality from law, nor law from religion. Tribal custom is religious; all social institutions are connected with religion; religion is intimately mixed up with every act of daily life. There is a stage in the evolution of civilisation when religion is little more than the practice of ritual; but it is not the earliest. Nor