called the "fault" or break in the religious strata of
higher races. The nature of that "fault" may thus be described: While
the deities of several low savage peoples are religiously regarded as
guardians and judges of conduct both in this life and in the next, among
higher barbarians they are often little, or not at all, interested in
conduct. Again, while among Australians, and Andamanese, and Fuegians,
there is hardly a verifiable trace, if any trace there be, of sacrifice
to any divine being, among barbarians the gods beneath the very highest
are in receipt even of human sacrifice. Even among barbarians the
highest deity is very rarely worshipped with sacrifice. Through various
degrees he is found to lose all claim on worship, and even to become a
mere name, and finally a jest and a mockery. Meanwhile ancestral ghosts,
and gods framed on the same lines as ghosts, receive sacrifice of food
and of human victims. Once more, the high gods of low savages are not
localised, not confined to any temple or region. But the gods of higher
barbarians (the gods beneath the highest), are localised in this way, as
occasionally even the highest god also is.

All this shows that, among advancing barbarians, the gods, if they
started from the estate of gods among savages on the lowest level,
become demoralised, limited, conditioned, relegated to an otiose
condition, and finally deposed, till progressive civilisation, as in
Greece, reinstates or invents purer and more philosophic conceptions,
without being able to abolish popular and priestly myth and ritual.

Here, then, is a flaw or break in the strata of religion. What was
the cause of this flaw? We answer, the evolution, through ghosts,
of "animistic" gods who retained the hunger and selfishness of these
ancestral spirits whom the lowest savages are not known to worship.

The moral divine beings of these lowest races, beings (when religiously
regarded) unconditioned, in need of no gift that man can give, are not
to be won by offerings of food and blood. Of such offerings ghosts,
and gods modelled on ghosts, are notoriously in need. Strengthened
and propitiated by blood and sacrifice (not offered to the gods of low
savages), the animistic deities will become partisans of their adorers,
and will either pay no regard to the morals of their worshippers, or
will be easily bribed to forgive sins. Here then is, ethically speaking,
a flaw in the strata of religion, a flaw found in the c