pectral as Bathybius. On other more important
points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion
without too much diffident apprehensiveness.

[Footnote 1: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 417, 421. 'The medicine men
are treated as gods.... The medicine man becomes a god after death.']

[Footnote 2: I have published a chapter on Myths on the Origin of Death in
_Modern Mythology_.]

[Footnote 3: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 311-316.]

[Footnote 4: Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 197.]

[Footnote 5: Robertson Smith. _The Prophets of Israel_, p. 61.]

[Footnote 6: _Evolution of the Idea of God_, p. 170.]

XII

SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS

It is among 'the lowest savages' that the Supreme Beings are most regarded
as eternal, moral (as the morality of the tribe goes, or above its
habitual practice), and _powerful_. I have elsewhere described the Bushman
god Cagn, as he was portrayed to Mr. Orpen by Qing, who 'had never
before seen a white man except fighting.' Mr. Orpen got the facts from
Qing by inducing him to explain the natives' pictures on the walls of
caves. 'Cagn made all things, and we pray to him,' thus: 'O Cagn, O Cagn,
are we not thy children? Do you not see us hunger? Give us food.' As to
ethics, 'At first Cagn was very good, but he got spoilt through fighting
so many things.' 'How came he into the world?' 'Perhaps with those who
brought the Sun: only the initiated know these things.' It appears that
Qing was not yet initiated in the dance (answering to a high rite of the
Australian _Bora_) in which the most esoteric myths were unfolded.[1]

In Mr. Spencer's 'Descriptive Sociology' the religion of the Bushmen is
thus disposed of. 'Pray to an insect of the caterpillar kind for success
in the chase.' That is rather meagre. They make arrow-poison out of
caterpillars,[2] though Dr. Bleek, perhaps correctly, identifies Cagn
with i-kaggen, the insect.

The case of the Andaman Islanders may be especially recommended to
believers in the anthropological science of religion. For long these
natives were the joy of emancipated inquirers as the 'godless Andamanese.'
They only supply Mr. Spencer's 'Ecclesiastical Institutions' with
a few instances of the ghost-belief.[3] Yet when the Andamanese are
scientifically studied _in situ_ by an educated Englishman, Mr. Man, who
knows their language, has lived with them for eleven years, and presided
over our benevolent efforts 'to reclaim them from their savage state,'
the