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man, or in a horse when, by neighing, it solicits human assistance? Unless this is shown, the act of a human being adoring even a beast must be held to be utterly unlike any act of a beast towards a man.

NOTE XXVI., page 263.

ALLEGED ATHEISM OF SOUTH AMERICAN TRIBES.

The words of Spix and Martius are as follows: "Chained to the present, he (the Brazilian Indian) hardly ever raises his eyes to the starry firmament. Yet he is actuated by a certain awe of some constellations, as of everything that indicates a spiritual connection of things. His chief attention, however, is not directed to the sun, but to the moon, according to which he calculates time, and from which he is used to deduce good and evil. As all that is good passes without notice by him, and only what is disagreeable makes an impression on him, he acknowledges no cause of good, or no God, but only an evil principle which meets him sometimes in the form of a lizard, of a man with stag's feet, of a crocodile, or an ounce; sometimes transforms itself into a swamp, &c.; leads him astray, vexes him, brings him. into difficulty and danger, and even kills him. They ascribe a direct intercourse with the demons to their pajé, who is acquainted with many powerful herbs, appears to be at the same time their priest and physician, and contrives to maintain his credit among them by all kinds of conjuring tricks. In extraordinary cases he is applied to for his advice, which he gives, after con

sulting the demons, for which purpose he generally uses a dark tempestuous night. Certain animals, for instance, a kind of goatsucker, and the screaming kinds of vulture, caracarai, and caoha, are messengers from the dead to the pajé, and therefore highly respected by everybody." -Travels in Brazil, b. iv. ch. ii.

What Mr Wallace says is: "I cannot make out that they have any belief that can be called a religion. They appear to have no definite idea of a God; if asked who they think made the rivers, and the forests, and the sky, they will reply that they do not know, or sometimes that they suppose that it was 'Tupanan,' a word that appears to answer to God, but of which they understand nothing. They have much more definite ideas of a bad spirit, 'Jurapari,' or Devil, whom they fear, and endeavour through their pajés to propitiate. When it thunders they say the Jurapari' is angry, and their idea of natural death is that the Jurapari kills them. At an eclipse they believe that this bad spirit is killing the moon, and they make all the noise they can to frighten him away." -Travels on the Amazons and Rio Negro, p. 530. 1853.

The statement of Mr Bates (The Naturalist on the River Amazons, vol. ii. ch. iii., pp. 162, 163, 1863) is substantially identical with that of Mr Wallace, his fellowtraveller. The only definite information in it is that the Indian Vicente did not know the cause of lightning, and had never reflected on who made the sun, stars, and trees. If Vicente had known the cause of lightning he must have been more learned than a European savant before the time of Franklin; and if he had meditated on the maker of the sun, stars, and trees, his religion must have been of a more thoughtful character than that of the ordinary ancient Greek or Roman.

If Ebrard's view (see Apologetik, ii. 359 and 366) of the Malayan origin of the Tupi tribes of South America could be established, it would follow that these tribes must have gradually fallen away from the worship of one supreme god, Tupan. No one, I think, who has not a theory to maintain, can consider the circumstances in which most of the Brazilian Indian tribes are placed without coming to the conclusion that they must have sunk from a higher intellectual and religious level. Small colonies of English or Irish peasants placed in the same circumstances would be certain to degenerate rapidly.

NOTE XXVII., page 265.

ALLEGED ATHEISM OF NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES.

For the evidence which Waitz has collected as to the religion of the Indians of California, see 'Anthropologie der Naturvölker,' Bd. iv. pp. 243, 244. Father Baegert's account will be found in the Smithsonian Transactions, 1863-64, and Father Boscana's in Bancroft's 'Native Races of the Western States of America,' vol. iii. pp. 161-170.

The works of Bancroft, Müller, and Waitz are those which contain most information on the religion of the North American tribes, although the publications of Catlin, Schoolcraft, &c., still retain their value. Dr Brinton's Myths of the New World' (1868) is not always as convincing as it is interesting.

It is to be regretted that Müller should have adopted a theory which has so little real foundation as that the

worship of ghosts is characteristic of northern tribes and cold regions, and the worship of the sun of southern tribes and warm regions. This theory-which would require Senegambia, for example, to be extremely cold -injuriously affects his exposition, and still more his explanation, of facts. But his constant exaggeration of the power of physical influences and comparative neglect of the operation of historical causes do not prevent his work from being valuable as a collection of materials.

NOTE XXVIII., page 269.

ALLEGED ATHEISM OF POLYNESIANS AND
AUSTRALASIANS.

Jukes was only a single day on Dalrymple or Damood Island. He found that the people had neat and good huts, and he saw a building different from, and much superior to, any of the rest. After describing it, he says: "Whether this was their temple, their place for depositing the dead, or a chief's house, we could not make out. We, however, saw no appearance of any chief, or of one man exercising authority among them; neither could we discover any traces of religious belief or observance."-Voyage of H.M.S. Fly, vol. i. p. 164. This testimony is supposed by Sir J. Lubbock to be evidence that the Damood Islanders are atheists.

Captain Wilson was unfavourably circumstanced for making inquiries into the religion of the Pellew Islanders; but no one, I think, who reads the interesting pages (216-220) which he has devoted to the subject in his

'Account of the Pellew Islands,' will fail to find Sir J. Lubbock's view of his evidence inaccurate.

Mr Wallace was six weeks at Wanumbai, and all that he tells us of his residence there (see The Malay Archipelago, vol. ii. ch. xxxi.) is confirmatory of his own statement, that "he could not get much real knowledge of the customs of its people." He was himself, however, regarded as a sorcerer, who would make his dead birds and beasts live again when he returned to England, and who had caused the unusual spell of good weather which coincided with his visit.

The following works throw much light on the character of Polynesian beliefs: Sir George Grey's 'Polynesian Mythology' (1855), Rev. R. Taylor's 'Te Ika a Mani' (1855), Waitz, vol. v., Fornander's 'Account of the Polynesian Race,' vol. i., and the Rev. Mr Gill's 'Myths and Songs from the South Pacific Islands' (1876). They show that savages who have been supposed to have no religious conceptions have had really a rich mythology, resting on metaphysical ideas about the source and development and order of existences, such as a priori theorists and rash generalisers would have assuredly declared could never have entered a savage mind.

The most widely diffused Polynesian term for God is atua. According to Mr Gill, it signifies kernel, pith, or life, God being conceived of as the core of the world and the life of humanity; according to Mr Taylor, beyond, as a man's shadow-hence a spirit, God, or anything beyond our comprehension. Max Müller (Hibbert Lectures, pp. 89, 90) expresses himself very decidedly in favour of the view of Mr Gill.

From a "Report on Australian Languages and Traditions" in the 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute,'

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