Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/600

 290 The Origin of Monotheism.

alities in himself, not because the two gods have become identified with one another, but because his own people have raised him to one god-head, and the people of Levuka to another. It is unfortunate, however, that in Fiji the theory of divine kingship has so decayed that it has to be reconstituted largely by inference. We cannot, there- fore, follow these complications in their consequences. Indeed, South Sea Islanders, and probably savages generally, are unsatisfactory witnesses in this respect, for not having a class devoted to intellectual pursuits they never develop extensive systems of thought as the Europeans have done or the Asiatics ; they supply us with hints, but seldom give us the theory. In Europe and Asia too, political unity has been carried out with a thoroughness unknown to savages ; petty states have been absorbed into mighty kingdoms, and it is easy to see how, under those conditions, the idea of one supreme god, of whom all others are but aspects, must have been strongly promoted by the existence of one supreme king uniting in himself the divine attributes of all the petty kings he has displaced.

Conquest also acts indirectly in that it removes the king and rulers further from the people, and weakens the personal tie ; it accustoms people to give allegiance to principles rather than to men ; it turns their devotion to abstractions rather than to concrete things. The clansman fights for his chief, but the modern British fight for freedom or the Empire. In the formula " for King and Country," the king is a mere survival, the country is the reality.

Monotheistic Enthusiasm. We have seen how the germ of monotheism lies in the doctrine of divine kingship, and how conquest helps it to develop. In the end it comes to pass that everybody is everybody else, personalities and attributes are multiplied beyond reason, for king after king is added to the list. There is a limit to man's memory and to their powers of