ine tradition. Garcilasso may possibly be refining on
facts, but he asks for no theory of divine primitive tradition in the case
of Pachacamac, whom he attributes to philosophical reflection.

In the following chapter we discuss 'the old Degeneration theory,' and
contrast it with the scheme provisionally offered in this book. We have
already observed that the Degeneration theory biasses the accounts of some
missionaries who are obviously anxious to find traces of a Primitive
Tradition, originally revealed to all men, but only preserved in a pure
form by the Jews. To avoid deception by means of this bias we have chosen
examples of savage creative beings from wide areas, from diverse ages,
from non-missionary statements, from the least contaminated backward
peoples, and from their secret mysteries and hymns.

Thus, still confining ourselves to the American continent, we have the
ancient hymns of the Zunis, in no way Christianised, and never chanted in
the presence of the Mexican Spanish, These hymns run thus: 'Before the
beginning of the New Making, Awonawilona, the Maker and container of All,
the All-Father, solely had being.' He then evolved all things 'by thinking
himself outward in space.' Hegelian! but so are the dateless hymns of the
Maoris, despite the savage mythology which intrudes into both sets of
traditions. The old fable of Ouranos and Gaia recurs in Zuni as in
Maori.[37]

I fail to see how Awonawilona could be developed out of the ghost of chief
or conjurer. That in which all things potentially existed, yet who was
more than all, is not the ghost of a conjurer or chief. He certainly is
not due to missionary influence. No authority can be better than that of
traditional sacred chants found among a populace which will not sing them
before one of their Mexican masters.

We have tried to escape from the bias of belief in a primitive divine
tradition, but bias of every kind exists, and must exist. At present the
anthropological hypothesis of ancestor-worship as the basis, perhaps (as
in Mr. Spencer's theory) the only basis of religion, affects observers.

Before treating the theory of Degeneration let us examine a case of the
anthropological bias. The Fijians, as we learned from Williams, have
ancestral gods, and also a singular form of the creative being, Ndengei,
or, as Mr. Basil Thomson calls him, Degei. Mr. Thomson writes: 'It is
clear that the Fijians humanised their gods, because they had once existed
o