rimitive logic.

On any such theories as these the belief in a moral Supreme Being is a
very late (or a very early?) result of evolution, due to the action of
advancing thought upon the original conception of ghosts. This opinion of
Mr. Im Thurn's is, roughly stated, the usual theory of anthropologists.
We wish, on the other hand, to show that the idea of God, as he is
conceived of by our inquiring plain man, is shadowed forth (among
contradictory fables) in the lowest-known grades of savagery, and
therefore cannot arise from the later speculation of men, comparatively
civilised and advanced, on the original datum of ghosts. We shall
demonstrate, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and even
Mr. Tylor, that the Supreme Being, and, in one case at least, the casual
sprites of savage faith, are active moral influences. What is even more
important, we shall make it undeniable that Anthropology has simplified
her problem by neglecting or ignoring her facts. While the real problem is
to account for the evolution out of ghosts of the eternal, creative moral
god of the 'plain man,' the germ of such a god or being in the creeds of
the lowest savages is by anthropologists denied, or left out of sight, or
accounted for by theories contradicted by facts, or, at best, is explained
away as a result of European or Islamite influences. Now, as the problem
is to account for the evolution of the highest conception of God, as far
as that conception exists among the most backward races, the problem can
never be solved while that highest conception of God is practically
ignored.

Thus, anthropologists, as a rule, in place of facing and solving their
problem, have merely evaded it--doubtless unwittingly. This, of course, is
not the practice of Mr. Tylor, though even his great work is professedly
much more concerned with the development of the idea of spirit and with
the lower forms of animism than with the real crux--the evolution of the
idea (always obscured by mythology) of a moral, uncreated, undying God
among the lowest savages. This negligence of anthropologists has arisen
from a single circumstance. They take it for granted that God is always
(except where the word for God is applied to a living human being)
regarded as Spirit. Thus, having accounted for the development of the
idea of spirit, they regard God as that idea carried to its highest
power, and as the final step in its evolution. But, if we can show that
the e