er in which the
different political development of East and West affected the religion of
Greece and of the Semites. In Greece, monarchy fell, at an early period,
before the aristocratic houses. The result was 'a divine aristocracy of
many gods, only modified by a weak reminiscence of the old kingship in the
not very effective sovereignty' (or _prytany_) 'of Zeus. In the East the
national god tended to acquire a really monarchic sway.'[12] Australia
escaped polytheistic degeneracy by having no aristocracy, as in Polynesia,
where aristocracy, as in early Greece, had developed polytheism. Ghosts
and spirits the Australians knew, but not polytheistic gods, nor
departmental deities, as of war, agriculture, art. The savage had no
agriculture, and his social condition was not departmental. In yet another
way, political advance produces religious degeneration, if polytheism be
degeneration from the conception of one relatively supreme moral being.
To make a nation, several tribes must unite. Each has its god, and the
nation is apt to receive them all, equally, into its Pantheon. Thus, if
worshippers of Baiame, Pundjel, and Darumulun coalesced into a nation,
we might find all three gods living together in a new polytheism. In fact,
granting a relatively pure starting-point, degeneration from it must
accompany every step of civilisation, to a certain distance.

Unlike Semitic gods, Darumulun receives no sacrifice. As we have said, he
has no kin with ghosts, and their sacrifices could not be carried on into
his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the
Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to
live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed
by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats.
The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun)
met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond
the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the
dead hand, carried about by the family, who would wave the black fragment
at the dreaded Aurora Borealis, crying, 'Send it away!' I am unacquainted
with any sacrifices to ancestral ghosts among this people who cannot long
remember their ancestors, consequently the practice has not been refracted
on their supreme Master's cult. In the cult of Darumulun, and of other
highest gods of lowest savages, nothing answers to the Hebrew techn