ootnote 27: _Rites,_ pp. 28, 29.]

[Footnote 28: Acosta, lib. vi. ch. 21: Garcilasso. ii. 88, 89.]

[Footnote 29: _Rites_, p. 12.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid. p.54.]

[Footnote 31: _Prim. Cult_. ii, 337, 338.]

[Footnote 32: _Rites_, p. 29.]

[Footnote 33: Garcilasso, ii. 69.]

[Footnote 34: _Rites and Laws_, p. 91 _et seq_.]

[Footnote 35: Payne, i. 139.]

[Footnote 36: Op. cit. i. 468. Mr. Payne absolutely rejects
Ixtlilochitl's story of the monotheism of Nezahualcoyotl; 'Torquemada
knows nothing of it,' i. 490.]

[Footnote 37: Cushing, _Report, Ethnol. Bureau_, 1891-92, p. 379.]

[Footnote 38: _J.A.I_. May 1895, pp. 341-344.]

[Footnote 39: ii. 191, 1829.]

[Footnote 40: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 345, 346. Ellis, ii. 193.]

[Footnote 41: Ellis, ii. 221.]

[Footnote 42: _The Faiths of The World_, p. 413.]

XV

THE OLD DEGENERATION THEORY

If any partisan of the anthropological theory has read so far into this
argument, he will often have murmured to himself, 'The old degeneration
theory!' On this Dr. Brinton remarked in 1868:

'The supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened
conditions, before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed which
afterwards, at various times, was revived by reformers, is a belief that
should have passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises
of a state of nature ceased to be the theme of philosophers[1].'

'The old degeneration theory' practically, and fallaciously, resolved
itself, as Mr. Tylor says, into two assumptions--'first, that the history
of culture began with the appearance on earth of a semi-civilised race of
men; and second, that from this stage culture has proceeded in two
ways--backward to produce savages, and forward to produce civilised
men[2].' That hypothesis is false to all our knowledge of evolution.

The hypothesis here provisionally advocated makes no assumptions
at all. It is a positive fact that among some of the lowest savages
there exists, not a doctrinal and abstract Monotheism, but a belief
in a moral, powerful, kindly, creative Being, while this faith is found
in juxtaposition with belief in unworshipped ghosts, totems, fetishes,
and so on. The powerful creative Being of savage belief sanctions truth,
unselfishness, loyalty, chastity, and other virtues. I have set forth the
difficulties involved in the attempt to derive this Being from ghosts and
other lower forms of belief.

Now, it is mere matter of fact, and