modern Deists.[2] They are remote from Atheism and
from cult! Suggestions about an ancient Egyptian influence are made, but
popular Egyptian religion was not monotheistic, and priestly thought could
scarcely influence the ancestors of the Dinkas. M. Lejean says these
peoples are so practical and utilitarian that missionary religion takes no
hold on them. Mr. Spencer does not give the ideas of the Dinkas, but it is
not easy to see how the too beneficent Dendid could be evolved out of
ghost-propitiation, 'the origin of all religions.' Rather the Dinkas, a
practical people, seem to have simply forgotten to be grateful to
their Maker; or have decided, more to the credit of the clearness of their
heads than the warmth of their hearts, that gratitude he does not want.
Like the French philosopher they cultivate _l'independance du coeur_,
being in this matter strikingly unlike the Pawnees.

Let us now take a case in which ancestor-worship, and no other form of
religion (beyond mere superstitions), has been declared to be the practice
of an African people. Mr. Spencer gives the example of natives of the
south-eastern district of Central Africa described by Mr. Macdonald in
'Africana.'[3] The dead man becomes a ghost-god, receives prayer and
sacrifice, is called a Mulungu (= great ancestor or = sky?), is preferred
above older spirits, now forgotten; such old spirits may, however, have a
mountain top for home, a great chief being better remembered; the
mountain god is prayed to for rain; higher gods were probably similar
local gods in an older habitat of the Yao.[4]

Such is in the main Mr. Spencer's _resume_ of Mr. Duff Macdonald's report.
He omits whatever Mr. Macdonald says about a Being among the Yaos,
analogous to the Dendid of the Dinkas, or the Darumulun of Australia, or
the Huron Ahone. Yet analysis detects, in Mr. Macdonald's report,
copious traces of such a Being, though Mr. Macdonald himself believes in
ancestor-worship as the Source of the local religion. Thus, Mulungu,
or Mlungu, used as a proper name, 'is said to be the great spirit,
_msimu_, of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits
together.[5] This is a singular stretch of savage philosophy, and
indicates (says Mr. Macdonald) 'a grasping after a Being who is the
totality of all individual existence.... If it fell from the lips of
civilised men instead of savages, it would be regarded as philosophy.
Expressions of this kind among the natives ar