Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/25

 If he is right, if "providing food for it" (the corpse or ghost) is a recent custom, what becomes of Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory?

If Mr. Dawson is right in Australia we surprise religion already possessed of a God on his way to be otiose. Byamee sits like Keats's

and Pirnmeheal is seldom mentioned. Elsewhere Durumulun is served in the secret rites of the mysteries; none of these gods receive food or sacrifice. Religion is at this point, and is' only just beginning to turn towards animism. Corpse-feeding is recent. In Mrs. Parker's book Byamee is implored to receive the soul of Eerin. "For Eerin was faithful on earth, faithful to the laws you left us." The mourners "let their blood drop into his grave," but such a sacrifice is not necessarily more than a tribute of affectionate regret. It need not imply feeding, while of later sacrifices to spirits I have vainly looked for a trace. Now, by a mythical inconsistency, the spirit of Eerin (or one of his spirits, perhaps his doowee) dwells in a grey owl.

Here, then, is a kind of theism, and beside it only the germs of an animism which is not yet a religion of service and propitiation of ancestors.

This helps my argument (that theism is not the latest flower of animism) very well, and Mr. Dawson (as far as his evidence attests) has no theory to prove or disprove.