conceived of by himself, _minus_
fleshly body (as a rule), and _minus_ Death. He is not necessarily a
'spirit,' though that term may now be applied to him. He was not
originally differentiated as 'spirit' or 'not spirit.' He is a Being,
conceived of without the question of 'spirit,' or 'no spirit' being
raised; perhaps he was originally conceived of before that question could
be raised by men. When we call the Supreme Being of savages a 'spirit' we
introduce our own animistic ideas into a conception where it may not have
originally existed. If the God is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th
power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as
well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of God. He
believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the
sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just a
_Being_, anthropomorphic, not a _mrart_, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is
a _wesen_, Being, _Vui_; we have hardly a term for an immortal existence
so undefined. If the being is an idealised first ancestor (as among the
Kurnai), he is not, on that account, either man or ghost of man. In the
original conception he is a powerful intelligence who was from the first:
who was already active long before, by a breach of his laws, an error in
the delivery of a message, a breach of ritual, or what not, death entered
the world. He was not affected by the entry of death, he still exists.

Modern minds need to become familiar with this indeterminate idea of the
savage Supreme Being, which, logically, may be prior to the evolution of
the notion of ghost or spirit.

But how does it apply when, as by the Kurnai, the Supreme Being is
reckoned an ancestor?

It can very readily be shown that, when the Supreme Being of a savage
people is thus the idealised First Ancestor, he can never have been
envisaged by his worshippers as at any time a _ghost_; or, at least,
cannot logically have been so envisaged where the nearly universal
belief occurs that death came into the world by accident, or needlessly.

Adam is the mythical first ancestor of the Hebrews, but he died, [Greek:
uper moron], and was not worshipped. Yama, the first of Aryan men who
died, was worshipped by Vedic Aryans, but _confessedly_ as a ghost-god.
Mr. Tylor gives a list of first ancestors deified. The Ancestor of the
Maudans did not die, consequently is no ghost; _emigravit_, he 'moved
west.' Where the First