the Africans. However they work, the
spirits work for righteousness.]

[Footnote 33: Obviously there could be no Family God before there was the
institution of the Family.]

[Footnote 34: Callaway, _Rel. of Amazulu_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 35: Callaway, p. 1.]

[Footnote 36: Op. cit. p. 8.]

[Footnote 37: Op. cit. p. 7.]

[Footnote 38: Op. cit. p. 19.]

[Footnote 39: Callaway, pp. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 40: Pp. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 41: Pp. 49, 50.]

[Footnote 42: P. 67.]

[Footnote 43: P. 122.]

XIII

MORE SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS

If many of the lowest savages known to us entertain ideas of a Supreme
Being such as we find among Fuegians, Australians, Bushmen, and
Andamanese, are there examples, besides the Zulus, of tribes higher in
material culture who seem to have had such notions, but to have partly
forgotten or neglected them? Miss Kingsley, a lively, observant, and
unprejudiced, though rambling writer, gives this very account of the Bantu
races. Oblivion, or neglect, will show itself in leaving the Supreme Being
alone, as he needs no propitiation, while devoting sacrifice and ritual to
fetishes and ghosts. That this should be done is perfectly natural if the
Supreme Being (who wants no sacrifice) were the first evolved in thought,
while venal fetishes and spirits came in as a result of the ghost theory.
But if, as a result of the ghost theory, the Supreme Being came last in
evolution, he ought to be the most fashionable object of worship, the
latest developed, the most powerful, and most to be propitiated. He is the
reverse.

To take an example: the Dinkas of the Upper Nile ('godless,' says Sir
Samuel Baker) 'pay a very theoretical kind of homage to the all-powerful
Being, dwelling in heaven, whence he sees all things. He is called
"Dendid" (great rain, that is, universal benediction?).' He is omnipotent,
but, being all beneficence, can do no evil; so, not being feared, he is
not addressed in prayer. The evil spirit, on the other hand, receives
sacrifices. The Dinkas have a strange old chant:

'At the beginning, when Dendid made all things,
He created the Sun,
And the Sun is born, and dies, and comes again!
He created the Stars,
And the Stars are born, and die, and come again!
He created Man,
And Man is born, and dies, and returns no more!'

It is like the lament of Moschus.[1]

Russegger compares the Dinkas, and all the neighbouring peoples who hold
the same beliefs, to