Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/357

 Rh by reference to the tribal customs and environment, but by a far loftier religion and an alien civilisation. The result is to add one more to the long list of warnings that Science is a jealous mistress, who must be wooed for her own sake, and not because she is presumed to be the latest favourite of a rich old aunt, Theology.

Something might well be added on Mr. Lang's presentation of the ceremonies themselves. But I have already occupied too much space; and what has been said is enough—perhaps more than enough—to tire the most patient reader. We have as yet information about the religious faith and ceremonies of very few of the Australian natives. The unity of the race and its isolation through unknown periods of time afford ground for the hope that when, if ever, we are able to study it as a whole, the process of comparison will yield results of special value to the anthropologist, results not the least of which will be gotten in the region of its religious belief. But our efforts to this end will be foredoomed to failure, unless we anxiously put aside all Christian and highly civilised conceptions, and endeavour, first of all, to view the religion and ethics of the Blackfellows as part of, and in connection with, their general condition, mental, social, and material. When we have exhausted every available fact, and failed to correlate the faith and moral code of the race with the rest of its culture, then and only then shall we be justified in admitting the incongruity which Mr. Lang asserts between them. Even so much as we now know, however, affords a strong presumption that the more we learn about them, the more intimate and indissoluble will be seen to be the bond between these two sets of phenomena. No wonder the author distrusts his own theory. I am greatly mistaken if the evidence I have imperfectly brought together here do not lead us to share his distrust, and beckon us to something more than a superficial examination of his account of the beliefs of other savages.