Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/23

 Rh Dr. Bleek, "exceed the Bushmen in civilisation and political organisation." Possibly the Bushmen once enjoyed a higher culture; they may, for all one can tell, be examples of degradations. Mr. Max Müller says, "In Africa the most degraded race, the Bushmen, are clearly a corruption of the Hottentots, while it is well known that some eminent ethnologists look upon the Hottentots as degraded emigrants from Egypt." Perhaps the blood of poets like Pentaur, and of artists like the sculptors of the ancient Empire, flows in the blood of the Bushmen; perhaps not. Meanwhile their myths are much on the level of the Australian and Chinook religion and cosmogonic legends. Possibly the Chinooks and the Australians are also descendants of the ancient Egyptians, which would, of course, account for the resemblance between their ideas, and the ideas of the Bushmen. On the other hand, it may be averred that whether the Bushmen have risen to, or have been degraded to, their present estate, savages they are. Their myths, again, reflect the mental condition and express the speculative conclusions which we have found to mark the savage philosophy, and which we shall prove to have left their traces in the civilised religions. Thus it is of little importance to our inquiry whether the Bushmen have sunk from a lofty civilisation, or whether they have never been much more polite than they are at