ans, 'so far
as the scanty evidence may be trusted.' We have shown that (as known
to Mr. Spencer in 1876) it may not be trusted at all; the Andamanese
possessing a moral Supreme Being, though they are not, apparently,
ancestor-worshippers. The Australians 'show us not much persistence in
ghost-propitiation,' which, if it exists, ceases when the corpses are tied
up and buried, or after they are burned, or after the bones, carried about
for a while, are exposed on platforms. Yet many Australian tribes possess
a moral Supreme Being.

In fact ghost-worship, in Mr. Spencer's scheme, cannot be fairly well
developed till society reaches the level of 'settled groups whose
burial-places are in their midst.' Hence the development of a moral
Supreme Being among tribes _not_ thus settled, is inconceivable, on
Mr. Spencer's hypothesis.[6] By that hypothesis, 'worshipped ancestors,
according to their remoteness, were regarded as divine, semi-divine, and
human.'[7] Where we find, then, the Divine Being among nomads who do not
remember their great-grandfathers, the Spencerian theory is refuted by
facts. We have the effect, the Divine Being, without the cause, worship of
ancestors.

Coming to the Hebrews, Mr. Spencer argues that 'the silence of their
legends (as to ancestor-worship) is but a negative fact, which may be as
misleading as negative facts usually are.' They are, indeed; witness
Mr. Spencer's own silence about savage Supreme Beings. But we may fairly
argue that if Israel had been given to ancestor-worship (as might partly
be surmised from the mystery about the grave of Moses) the Prophets would
not have spared them for their crying. The Prophets were unusually
outspoken men, and, as they undeniably do scold Israel for every other
kind of conceivable heresy, they were not likely to be silent about
ancestor-worship, if ancestor-worship existed. Mr. Spencer, then, rather
heedlessly, though correctly, argues that 'nomadic habits are unfavourable
to evolution of the ghost-theory.'[8] Alas, this gives away the whole
case! For, if all men began as nomads, and nomadic habits are unfavourable
even to the ordinary ghost, how did the Australian and other nomads
develop the Supreme Being, who, _ex hypothesi_, is the final fruit of the
ghost-flower? If you cannot have 'an established ancestor-worship' till
you abandon nomadic habits, how, while still nomadic, do you evolve a
Supreme Being? Obviously not out of ancestor-worship.

Mr. Sp