e man in existence. I
had been led to believe by the work of Miss Bird[30] that these people
were on a par with the Australians, and that they had no religious ideas
whatever. (Vogt seems to advance this conclusion also,[31] while De
Quatrefages[32][H] appears to have omitted this people from his
tabulation. Peschel places them among the Giliaks on the Lower Amoor,
and the inhabitants of the Kurile Islands.[33] These tribes are mixed
nature, devil, and phallic worshipers.) Batchelor, however, shows very
clearly that these people _do_ have a religion, and that this religion
is highly developed.

[30] Bird: _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_.

[31] Vogt: _Lectures on Man_.

[32] De Quatrefages: _The Human Species_.

[H] De Quatrefages, in his _Hommes Fossiles_, places the Ainus
anthropologically among the Primeval Teutons!

[33] Peschel: _The Races of Man_, p. 388.

Their chief god, or rather goddess (for the Ainus regard the female as
being higher than the male as far as gods are concerned), is the
sun.[34] Like the Peruvians, they regard the sun as the Creator, but
they are unlike them in the fact that they think that they cannot reach
the goddess by direct appeal. She must be addressed through
intermediaries or messengers. These messengers, the goddess of the fire,
the goddess of the water, etc., are in turn addressed through the
agency of _inao_, or prayer-sticks. This intermediary idea is curiously
like some practices of the Roman Catholic church, or, rather, of
communicants, who get the saints to carry their petitions to God.

[34] Batchelor: _The Ainu of Japan_, p. 89.

The inao are peculiar, inasmuch as nothing exactly like them is known.
The feather prayer-plumes of some of the Western Indians are used for
like purposes, but these are offered directly to the Great Spirit, and
not to intermediaries. "Inao, briefly described, are pieces of whittled
willow wood, having the shavings attached to the top."[35] Like the
Aleutians, when these people kill a bear or other wild animal, they
propitiate its spirit by bestowing upon it the most fulsome compliments,
and, like the religion of these Indians, the religion of the Ainus has
developed along natural lines, and shows certain phallic elements.

[35] Batchelor: _The Ainu of Japan_, p. 87.

We see from the examples here given, that religious feeling had its
origin in the idea of propitiation; in fact, that it was born in fear,
a