Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/533

VIII imagined as the ideal of those qualities which are, according to their standard, virtues worthy of being imitated. Such would be a man who is skilful in the use of weapons of offence and defence, all-powerful in magic, but generous and liberal to his people, who does no injury or violence to any one, yet treats with severity any breaches of custom or morality. Such is, according to my knowledge of the Australian tribes, their ideal of Headman, and naturally it is that of the Biamban, the master in the sky-country. Such a being, from Bunjil to Baiame, is Mami-ngaia, that is, "our father"; in other words, the All-father of the tribes.

The mental stages by which the conception of the All-father of the tribe may have been reached in these tribes perhaps commenced with the belief in the existence of the human self-consciousness as a spirit or a ghost, whose home on the earth and in the sky-country was dreamland. This would naturally lead to the belief in the existence of the ancestral ghosts, as a tribe like that on the earth, with a Headman and medicine-men, its fighting, feasting, and dancing. From this it is not a long stretch to the idea of the All-father of the tribe, since it is not uncommon, indeed I may go so far as to say, that it is, in my experience, common to address the elder men as father. Such seems to me the probable course of development of this belief, which moreover I am satisfied has been locally evolved, and not introduced from without. But in saying this I must guard myself from being thought to imply any primitive revelation of a monotheistic character. What I see is merely the action of elementary thought reaching conclusions such as all savages arc capable of, and which may have been at the root of monotheistic beliefs.

But all this does not bring us to the worship of the ancestor.

Although it cannot be alleged that these aborigines have consciously any form of religion, it may be said that their beliefs are such that, under favourable conditions, they might have developed into an actual religion, based on the worship of Mungan-ngaua or Baiame.

There is not any worship of Daramulun; but the dances