ersonal
Being, more remote and original than Heaven, just as the Zunis do. On
the lower plane, Chinese religion is overrun, as everyone knows, by
Animism and ancestor-worship. This is so powerful that it has given rise
to a native theory of Euhemerism. The departmental deities of Chinese
polytheism are explained by the Chinese on Euhemeristic principles:

'According to legend, the War God, or Military Sage, was once, in human
life, a distinguished soldier; the Swine God was a hog-breeder who lost
his pigs and died of sorrow; the God of Gamblers was _un decave_.'[2]

These are not statements of fact, but of Chinese Euhemeristic theory. On
that hypothesis, Confucius should now be a god; but of course he is not;
his spirit is merely localised in his temple, where the Emperor worships
him twice a year as ancestral spirits are worshipped.

Every theorist will force facts into harmony with his system, but I do not
see that the Chinese facts are contrary to mine. On the highest plane is
either a personal Supreme Being, Shang-ti, or there is Tien, Heaven (with
Earth, parent of men), neither of them necessarily owing, in origin,
anything to Animism. Then there is the political reflection of the Emperor
on Religion (which cannot exist where there is no Emperor, King, or Chief,
and therefore must be late), there is the animistic rabble of spirits
ancestral or not, and there is departmental polytheism. The spirits are,
of course, fed and furnished by men in the usual symbolical way. Nothing
shows or hints that Shang-ti is merely an imaginary idealised first
ancestor. Indeed, about all such explanations of the Supreme Being (say
among the Kurnai) as an idealised imaginary first ancestor, M. Reville
justly observes as follows: 'Not only have we seen that, in wide regions
of the uncivilised world, the worship of ancestors has invaded a domain
previously occupied by "Naturism" and Animism properly so called, that it
is, therefore, posterior to these; but, farther, we do not understand, in
Mr. Spencer's system, why, in so many places, the first ancestor is the
Maker, if not the Creator of the world, Master of life and death, and
possessor of divine powers, not held by any of his descendants. This
proves that it was not the first ancestor who became God, in the belief of
his descendants, but much rather the Divine Maker and Beginner of all,
who, in the creed of his adorers, became the first ancestor.'[3]

Our task has been limited, in