d, but are not propitiated by offerings of food (as
among Australians, Andamanese, and Blackfoot Indians), while the Creative
Being is not and never was a ghost, according to his worshippers.

At this point criticism may naturally remark that whether the savage
Supreme Being is feted, as by the Comanches, who offer puffs of smoke: or
is apparently half forgotten, as by the Algonquins and Zulus: whether
he is propitiated by sacrifice (which is very rare indeed), or only by
conduct, I equally claim him as the probable descendant in evolution of
the primitive, undifferentiated, not necessarily 'spiritual' Being of such
creeds as the Australian.

One must reply that this pedigree cannot, indeed, be historically traced,
but that it presents none of the logical difficulties inherent in the
animistic pedigree--namely, that the savage Supreme Being is the last and
highest result of evolution on animistic lines out of ghosts. It does not
run counter to the evidence universally offered by savages, that their
Supreme Being never was mortal man. It is consistent, whereas the
animistic hypothesis is, in this case, inconsistent, with the universal
savage theory of Death. Finally, as has been said before, granting my
opinion that there are two streams of religious thought, one rising in the
conception of an undifferentiated Being, eternal, moral, and creative, the
other rising in the ghost-doctrine, it stands to reason that the latter,
as best adapted to everyday needs and experiences, normal and supernormal,
may contaminate the former, and introduce sacrifice and food-propitiation
into the ritual of Beings who, by the original conception, 'need nothing
of ours.' At the same time, the conception of 'spirit,' once attained,
would inevitably come to be attached to the idea of the Supreme Being,
even though he was not at first conceived of as a spirit. We know, by our
own experience, how difficult it has become for us to think of an eternal,
powerful, and immortal being, except as a spirit. Yet this way of looking
at the Supreme Being, merely as _being_, not as spirit, must have existed,
granting that the idea of spirit has ghost for its first expression, as,
by their very definition, the high gods of savages are not ghosts, and
never were ghosts, but are prior to death.

Here let me introduce, by way of example, a Supreme Being _not_ of the
lowest savage level. Metaphysically he is improved on in statement,
morally he is stained with t