r lads--not a kind of
confirmation in the savage church--but is intended for adults.]

[Footnote 16: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1886, p. 310.]

[Footnote 17: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1885, p. 313.]

[Footnote 18: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. p. 459.]

[Footnote 19: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, p. 674.]

[Footnote 20: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 450.]

[Footnote 21: Cranz, pp. 198, 199.]

[Footnote 22: _Journal Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. 348-356.]

[Footnote 23: Rom. i. 19. Cranz, i. 199.]

[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work, _The Australian Race_, reports of
'godless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and
in Gippsland. These reports are usually the result of the ignorance or
contempt of white observers, cf. Tylor, i. 419. The reader is referred to
the Introduction for additional information about Australian beliefs, and
for replies to objections.]

XI

SUPREME GODS NOT NECESSARILY DEVELOPED OUT OF 'SPIRITS'

Before going on to examine the high gods of other low savages, I must here
again insist on and develop the theory, not easily conceived by us, that
the Supreme Being of savages belongs to another branch of faith than
ghosts, or ghost-gods, or fetishes, or Totems, and need not be--probably
is not--essentially derived from these. We must try to get rid of our
theory that a powerful, moral, eternal Being was, from the first, _ex
officio_, conceived as 'spirit;' and so was necessarily derived from a
ghost.

First, what was the process of development?

We have examined Mr. Tylor's theory. But, to take a practical case: Here
are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers
than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor worshippers; not polytheists; with
no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on
the _Anima Mundi_. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost
of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above,
'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge
continent? I cannot see that this problem has been solved or frankly
faced.

The distinction between the Australian deity, at his highest power,
unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the ordinary, waning, easily forgotten,
cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman, is essential. It is not easy to
show how, in 'the dark backward' of Australian life, the notion of
Mungan-ngaur grew from the idea of the ghost of a warrior. But there is no
logical necessity for t