on ancestor; beyond
which idea speculation does not seem to go. Among many North American
tribes it is usual to find an animal the chief deity, the hare or the
musk-rat or the coyote. It is very common to find in savage beliefs a
vague far-off god who is at the back of all the others, takes little
part in the management of things, and receives little worship. But it
is impossible to judge what that being was at an earlier time; he may
have been a nature-god or a spirit who has by degrees grown faint and
come to occupy this position. We cannot judge from the supreme beings
of savages, such as they are, that the belief in a supreme being was
generally diffused in the world[1] in the earliest times, and is not
to be derived from any of the processes from which the other gods
arose. We shall see afterwards how natural the tendency is which,
where there are several gods, brings one of them to the front while
the others lose importance. For a theory of primitive monotheism the
supreme gods of savages certainly do not furnish sufficient evidence;
they do not appear to have sprung all from the same source, but to
have advanced from very different quarters to the supreme position,
in obedience to that native instinct of man's mind which causes him,
even when he believes in many gods, to make one of them supreme.

[Footnote 1: _Cf._ A. Lang, _The Making of Religion_ (1898);
Galloway, _Studies in the Philosophy of Religion_ (1904), p. 123,
_sqq._]

Which Gods were First Worshipped?--If then early man formed his gods
from parts of nature and from spirits of departed ancestors or
heroes, and even, should the more backward races now existing
represent a stage of human life belonging to the early world, from
spirits residing in outward objects, which of these is the original
root of all the religions of the world? The claim has been made for
each of these kinds of religion, that it came first.

1. Fetish-gods came First.--Till recently the view prevailed that all
the religion of the world has sprung out of fetishism. First the
savage took for his god some casual object, as we have described,
then he chose higher objects, trees and mountains, rivers and lakes,
and even the sun and stars. The heavens at last became his supreme
fetish, and at a higher level, when he had learned about spirits, he
would make a spirit his fetish, and so at last come to Monotheism.

This view is attractive because it places the beginning of religion
in