is. In general, for the
lower tribes the world is peopled by spirits, which are the ghosts of
the departed or the embodiment of natural forces, and the feeling has
been that these are sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly.[1764] In
some cases the hurtful spirits stand in contrast with a god who may be a
strict ruler and somewhat indifferent to men, but not hostile; in other
cases there is a simple division of spirits into two classes, the
friendly and the unfriendly,[1765] and in the higher forms of savage
life there may be two such classes of deities.[1766] The double feeling
of man respecting the attitude of ghosts toward living human beings is
referred to above.[1767]

+969+. In certain higher forms of savage and half-civilized life we find
the conception of a definite contrast between the two sets of Powers.
The Hottentots are said to believe in two opposed supernatural beings,
the struggle between them ending to the advantage of the one who is
beneficent toward men.[1768] The Masai have two powerful beings, one
accounted good, the other bad; the difference between them is not
ethical, but represents only the relation of their acts to man's
well-being.[1769] The Malays have a very elaborate system of good and
evil spirits, but the system is colored by foreign influences.[1770] For
the Ainu snakes are an embodiment of merely physical evil, and other
Powers are the dispensers of physical well-being.[1771] The Arab jinn
represent the unwholesome and antagonistic conditions of nature, stand
opposed to the gods, and are without ethical motives.[1772] Even the
Andamanese, one of the lowest of human communities, have a division of
Powers into one who is friendly and two who are unfriendly.[1773] In all
these cases we have to recognize simply the expression of the perception
of two sets of physical agencies in the world. It is easy to exaggerate
the nature of these contrasts and to represent certain low tribes as
possessing general divine embodiments of good and evil.

+970+. Such a conception has been attributed to the American
Redmen,[1774] but on insufficient grounds. The most careful recent
investigations of the religious ideas of the Creeks, the Lenape, the
Pawnees, and the Californian Shasta (four typical communities) fail to
discover anything that can be called a real dualistic conception.[1775]
Dorsey mentions a Pawnee myth of the introduction of death into the
world by a member of the heavenly council of gods