e do they crystallise round Zeus? I have, at least, shown some
probable processes in the evolution.

Where criticism has not disputed the facts of the moral attributes, now
attached to, say, an Australian Being, it has accounted for them by a
supposed process of borrowing from missionaries and other Europeans. In
this book I deal with that hypothesis as urged by Sir A.B. Ellis, in West
Africa (chapter xiii.). I need not have taken the trouble, as this
distinguished writer had already, in a work which I overlooked, formally
withdrawn, as regards Africa, his theory of 'loan-gods.' Miss Kingsley,
too, is no believer in the borrowing hypothesis for West Africa, in
regard, that is, to the highest divine conception. I was, when I wrote,
unaware that, especially as concerns America and Australia, Mr. Tylor had
recently advocated the theory of borrowing ('Journal of Anthrop.
Institute,' vol. xxi.). To Mr. Tylor's arguments, when I read them, I
replied in the 'Nineteenth Century,' January 1899: 'Are Savage Gods
Borrowed from Missionaries?' I do not here repeat my arguments, but await
the publication of Mr. Tylor's 'Gifford Lectures,' in which his hypothesis
may be reinforced, and may win my adhesion.

It may here be said, however, that if the Australian higher religious
ideas are of recent and missionary origin, they would necessarily be known
to the native women, from whom, in fact, they are absolutely concealed by
the men, under penalty of death. Again, if the Son, or Sons, of Australian
chief Beings resemble part of the Christian dogma, they much more closely
resemble the Apollo and Hermes of Greece.[4] But nobody will say that the
Australians borrowed them from Greek mythology!

In chapter xiv., owing to a bibliographical error of my own, I have done
injustice to Mr. Tylor, by supposing him to have overlooked Strachey's
account of the Virginian god Ahone. He did not overlook Ahone, but
mistrusted Strachey. In an excursus on Ahone, in the new edition of 'Myth,
Ritual, and Religion,' I have tried my best to elucidate the bibliography
and other aspects of Strachey's account, which I cannot regard as
baseless. Mr. Tylor's opinion is, doubtless, different, and may prove more
persuasive. As to Australia, Mr. Howitt, our best authority, continues to
disbelieve in the theory of borrowing.

I have to withdraw in chapters x. xi. the statement that 'Darumulun never
died at all.' Mr. Hartland has corrected me, and pointed out that, am