Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/330

316 may suffer in the course of ages the most various fates, to be expanded, elaborated, transformed, or abandoned. Yet the philosophy of modern ages still to a remarkable degree follows the primitive courses of savage thought, even as the highways of our land so often follow the unchanging tracks of barbaric roads. Let us endeavour timidly and circumspectly to trace onward from savage times the courses of vast and pregnant generalization which tend towards the two greatest of the world's schemes of religious doctrine, the systems of Dualism and Monotheism.

Rudimentary forms of Dualism, the antagonism of a Good and Evil Deity, are well known among the lower races of mankind. The investigation of these savage and barbaric doctrines, however, is a task demanding peculiar caution. The Europeans in contact with these rude tribes since their discovery, themselves for the most part holding strongly dualistic forms of Christianity, to the extent of practically subjecting the world to the contending influences of armies of good and evil spirits under the antagonistic control of God and Devil, were liable on the one hand to mistake and exaggerate savage ideas in this direction, so that their records of native religion can only be accepted with reserve, while on the other hand there is no doubt that dualistic ideas have been largely introduced and developed among the savages themselves, under this same European influence. For instance, among the natives of Australia, we hear of the great deity Nambajandi who dwells in his heavenly paradise, where the happy shades of black men feast and dance and sing for evermore; over against him stands the great evil being Warrūgūra, who dwells in the nethermost regions, who causes the great calamities which befall mankind, and whom the natives represent with horns and tail, although no homed beast is indigenous in the land. There may be more or less native substratum in all this, but the hints borrowed from popular Christian ideas are