clusion, that all
religions in their later stages exhibit a much lower conception of the
Divinity than in their earlier form. It is only the hopelessly
prejudiced who can say, as does John Fiske, that "to regard classic
paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to
sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy." Sinning against
the consonant testimony of universal history is a venial offense, it
would seem, when the integrity of this "sound inductive philosophy"--that
is, of the Spencerian theory--is at stake. It needs but a glance at the
well-known facts of religious history to show the working of this _Law
of Decay_ as influencing the development of every system of ethnic belief
which has a recorded history or a literature.

The workings of this law can be traced even in the case of the savage
tribes of our own day. Of the African negroes, P. Bandin says that "their
traditions and religious doctrines ... show clearly that they are a
people in decadence.... They have an obscure and confused idea of the
only God, .... who no longer receives worship." (_"Fetichism,"_ p. 7-10.)
Winwood Reade testifies: "The negroes possess the remnants of a noble and
sublime religion, though they have forgotten its precepts and debased its
ceremonies." They still retain a recollection "of God, the Supreme, the
Creator." Concerning the Zulus, Bastian records that they informed him
that "their ancestors possessed the knowledge of .... that _source of
being_ which is above, which gives life to men." (_"Vorgeschichtliche
Schoepfungslieder."_) A missionary of the Lutheran General Synod, Rev. J.
C. Pedersen, wrote in _"Lutheran Observer,"_ August, 1910, concerning the
African natives that they still have a considerable display of religion,
but "ask him, who is the God in whom you trust? what do you mean by
trusting? how can he help you? and he will answer, 'I don't know, but the
old people used to say so, and taught us to say so.'" John Hanning
Speke, in his _"Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"_
records reminiscences among the degraded savages among whom he dwelt, of
a supreme God who dwells in heaven, but who no longer received worship.
Mungo Park, in the diary of his _"Travels in the Interior of Africa,"_
says that the Mandingoes, a degenerate race of fetish worshippers, still
possessed the knowledge of one God, but do not offer up prayers and
supplications to him.

In the record of his f