Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/348

334 to enumerate, among genuine deities of native West Indian religion, a being with characteristics thus on the face of them adopted from the religion of the white men. Yet even in such extreme cases, it does not necessarily follow that the definitions of these deities, vitiated as they are for ethnographical use by foreign influence, have not to some extent a native substratum. In criticising details, moreover, it must not be forgotten how largely the similarities in the religions of different races may be of independent origin, and how closely allied are many ideas in the rude native theologies of savages to ideas holding an immemorial place in the religions of their civilized invaders. For the present purpose, however, it is well to dwell especially on such evidence as by characteristic traits or early date is farthest removed from suspicion of being borrowed from a foreign source.

In surveying the peoples of the world, the ethnographer finds many who are not shown to have any definite conception of a supreme deity; and even where such a conception is placed on record, it is sometimes so vaguely asserted, or on such questionable authority, that he can but take note of it and pass on. In numerous cases, however, illustrated by the following collection from different regions, certain leading ideas, singly or blended, may be traced. There are many savage and barbaric religions which solve their highest problem by the simple process of raising to divine primacy one of the gods of polytheism itself. Even the system of the manes-worshipper has been stretched to reach the limit of supreme deity, in the person of the primæval ancestor. More frequently, it is the nature-worshipper's principle which has prevailed, giving to one of the great nature-deities the precedence of the rest. Here, by no recondite speculation, but by the plain teaching of nature, the choice has for the most part lain between two mighty visible divinities, the all-animating Sun and the all-encompassing Heaven. In the study of such schemes, we are on intellectual terra firma. There is among the religions of the lower races another notable group of systems, seemingly