SCORPION

Tylor, Edward Burnett, Sir, 1832-1917

"Primitive culture : researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom"

CHAPTER XVII.

ANIMISM (continued').

PAGE

Polytheism comprises a class of great Deities, ruling the course of
Nature and the life of Man Childbirth-god Agriculture-god
War-god God of the Dead First Man as Divine Ancestor
Dualism ; its rudimentary and unethical nature among low
races ; its development through the course of culture Good and
Evil Deity Doctrine of Divine Supremacy, distinct from, while
tending towards, the doctrine of Monotheism Idea of a Highest
or Supreme Deity evolved in various forms ; its place as completion
of the Polytheistic system and outcome of the Animistic philo-
x sophy ; its continuance and development among higher nations
| beneral survey of Animism as a Philosophy of Religion
Recapitulation of the theory advanced as to its development
through successive stages of culture ; its primary phases best
represented among the lower races, while survivals of these
among the higher races mark the transition from savage through
barbaric to civilized faiths Transition of Animism in the History
of Religion ; its earlier and later stages as a Philosophy of the
Universe ; its later stages as the principle of a Moral Institution . 304

ANIMISM (continued).

Polytheism comprises a class of Great Deities, ruling the course of Nature
and the life of Man Childbirth-god Agriculture-god War-god God
of the Dead First Man as Divine Ancestor Dualism ; its rudimen-
tary and unethical nature among low races ; its development through
the course of culture Good and Evil Deity Doctrine of Divine
Supremacy, distinct from, while tending towards, the doctrine of
Monotheism Idea of a Highest or Supreme Diety evolved in various
forms ; its place as completion of the Polytheistic system and out-
come of the Animistic philosophy ; its continuance and development
among higher nations General survey of Animism as a Philo-
sophy of Religion Recapitulation of the theory advanced as to its
development through successive stages of culture ; its primary phases
best represented among the lower races, while survivals of these among
the higher races mark the transition from savage through barbaric to
civilized faiths Transition of Animism in the History of Religion ;
its earlier and later stages as a Philosophy of the Universe ; its later
stages as the principle of a Moral Institution.

POLYTHEISM acknowledges, beside great fetish-deities like
Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, another class of great
gods whose importance lies not in visible presence, but
in the performance of certain great offices in the course
of Nature and the life of Man. The lower races can
furnish themselves with such deities, either by giving the
recognized gods special duties to perform, or by attributing
these functions to beings invented in divine personality for
the purpose. The creation of such divinities is however
carried to a much greater extent in the complex systems of
the higher polytheism. For a compact group of examples
showing to what different ideas men will resort for a deity
to answer a special end, let us take the deity presiding over

304






GOD OF AGRICULTURE. 305

Childbirth. In the West Indies, a special divinity occupied
with this function took rank as one of the great indigenous
fetish-gods ; l in the Samoan group, the household god of
the father's or mother's family was appealed to ; 2 in Peru the
Moon takes to this office, 3 and the same natural idea recurs
in Mexico; 4 in Esthonian religion the productive Earth-
mother appropriately becomes patroness of human birth ; 5
in the classic theology of Greece and Italy, the divine spouse
of the Heaven-king, Hera, 6 Juno, 7 favours and protects on
earth marriage and the birth of children ; and to conclude
the list, the Chinese work out the problem from the manes-
worshipper's point of view, for the goddess whom they call
' Mother ' and propitiate with many a ceremony and sacrifice
to save and prosper their children, is held to have been in
human life a skilful midwife. 8

The deity of Agriculture may be a cosmic being affecting
the weather and the soil, or a mythic giver of plants and
teacher of their cultivation and use. Thus among the
Iroquois, Heno the Thunder, who rides through the heavens
on the clouds, who splits the forest-trees with the thunder-
bolt-stones he hurls at his enemies, who gathers the clouds
and pours out the warm rains, was fitly chosen as patron of
husbandry, invoked at seed-time and harvest, and called
Grandfather by his children the Indians. 9 It is interesting
to notice again on the southern continent the working out
of this idea in the Tupan of Brazilian tribes; Thunder and
Lightning, it is recorded, they call Tupan, considering
themselves to owe to him their hoes and the profitable
art of tillage, and therefore acknowledging him as a deity. 10

1 Herrera, ' Indias Occidentales," Dec. i. 3, 3 ; J. G. Miillcr, ' Amcr.
Urrel.' pp. 175, 221.

Turner, ' Polynesia," p. 174.
Rivero and Tschudi, ' Peru," p. 160.
Kingsborough, 'Mexico,' vol. v. p. 179.
Castrin, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 89.
Welcker, ' Griech. Gotterl.' vol. i. p. 371.

7 Ovid. Fast. ii. 449.

8 Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 264. * Morgan, ' Iroquois,' p. 158.
10 De Laet, ' Novus Orbis,' xv. 2 ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 417 ; Brinion, pp. 1 52,

185 ; J. G. Miiller, p. 271, &c.



306 ANIMISM.

Among the Guarani race, Tamoi the Ancient of Heaven
had no less rightful claim, in his character of heaven-god,
to be venerated as the divine teacher of agriculture to his
people. 1 In Mexico, Centeotl the Grain-goddess received
homage and offerings at her two great festivals, and took
care of the growth and keeping of the corn. 2 In Polynesia,
we hear in the Society Islands of Ofanu the god of hus-
bandry, in the Tonga Islands of Alo Alo the fanner, god of
wind and weather, bearing office as god of harvest, and
receiving his offering of yams when he had ripened them. 3
A picturesque figure from barbaric Asia is Pheebee Yau, the
Ceres of the Karens, who sits on a stump and watches the
growing and ripening corn, to fill the granaries of the frugal
and industrious. 4 The Khonds worship at the same shrine,
a stone or tree near the village, both Burbi Pennu the god-
dess of new vegetation, and Pidzu Pennu the rain-god. 5
Among Finns and Esths it is the Earth-mother who appro-
priately undertakes the task of bringing forth the fruits.*
And so among the Greeks it is the same being, Demeter the
Earth-mother, who performs this function, while the Roman
Ceres who is confused with her is rather, as in Mexico, a
goddess of grain and fruit.'

The War -god is another being wanted among the lower
races, and formed or adapted accordingly. Areskove the
Iroquois War-god seems to be himself the great celestial
deity ; for his pleasant food they slaughtered human victims,
that he might give them victory over their enemies ; as a
pleasant sight for him they tortured the war-captives ; on
him the war-chief called in solemn council, and the warriors,
shouting his name, rushed into the battle he was surveying



D'Orbigny, ' L'Homme Ame'ricain,' vol. ii. p. 319.
Clavigero, ' Messico,' vol. ii. pp. 16, 68, 75.

Ellis, ' Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 333. Mariner, ' Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 115.
Cross, in ' Journ. Amer. Oriental Soc.' vol. iv. p. 316 ; Mason, p. 215.
Macpherson, ' India,' pp. 91, 355.
Castrin, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 89.

Welcker, ' Griech. Gotterl.' vol. ii. p. 467. Cox, ' Mythology of Aryan
Nations,' vol ii. p. 308.



GOD OF WAR. 307

from on high. Canadian Indians before the fight would
look toward the sun, or addressed the Great Spirit as god of
war ; Floridan Indians prayed to the Sun before their wars. 1
Araucanians of Chili entreated Pillan the Thunder-god
that he would scatter their enemies, and thanked him
amidst their cups after a victory. 2 The very name of Mexico
seems derived from Mexitli, the national War-god, iden-
tical or identified with the hideous gory Huitzilopochtli.
Not to attempt a general solution of the enigmatic nature
of this inextricable compound parthenogenetic deity, we
may notice the association of his principal festival with
the winter-solstice, when his paste idol was shot through
with an arrow, and being thus killed, was divided into
morsels and eaten, wherefore the ceremony was called
the teoqualo or ' god-eating.' This and other details tend
to show Huitzilopochtli as originally a nature-deity,
whose life and death were connected with the year's,
while his functions of War-god may be of later addition.'
Polynesia is a region where quite an assortment of war-
gods may be collected. Such, to take but one example,
was Tairi, war-god of King Kamehameha of the Sandwich
Islands, whose hideous image, covered with red feathers,
shark-toothed, mother-of-pearl-eyed, with helmet-crest of
human hair, was carried into battle by his special priest,
distorting his own face into hideous grins, and uttering
terrific yells which were considered to proceed from the
god.* Two examples from Asia may show what different
original conceptions may serve to shape such deities as
these upon. The Khond War-god, who entered into all
weapons, so that from instruments of peace they became
weapons of war, who gave edge to the axe and point
to the arrow, is the very personified spirit of tribal war,



1 J. G. Muller, ' Amer. Urrel.' pp. 141, 271, 274, 591, &c.
* Dobrizhoffer, ' Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 90.
8 Clavigero, ' Messico,' vol. ii. pp. 17, 81.

4 Ellis, ' Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 326; vol. iv. p. 158. See also Mariner,
Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 112 ; Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 218.



308 ANIMISM.

his token is the relic of iron and the iron weapons buried
in his sacred grove which stands near each group of
hamlets, and his name is Loha Pennu or Iron-god. 1 The
Chinese War-god, Kuang Ta, on the other hand, is an
ancient military ghost ; he was a distinguished officer, as
well as a ' faithful and honest courtier/ who flourished
during the wars of the Han dynasty, and emperors since
then have delighted to honour him by adding to his usual
title more and more honorary distinctions.* Looking at
these selections from the army of War-gods of the different
regions of the world, we may well leave their classic
analogues, Ares and Mars, as beings whose warlike function
we recognize, but not so easily their original nature. 3

It would be easy, going through the religious systems of
Polynesia and Mexico, Greece and Rome, India and China,
to give the names and offices of a long list of divinities,
patrons of hunting and fishing, carpentering and weaving,
and so forth. But studying here rather the continuity of
polytheistic ideas than the analysis of polytheistic divinities,
it is needless to proceed farther in the comparison of these
deities of special function, as recognized to some extent in
the lower civilization, before their elaborate development
became one of the great features of the higher.

The great polytheistic deities we have been examining,
concerned as they are with the earthly course of nature and
human life, are gods of the living. But even in savage
levels man began to feel an intellectual need of a God of the
Dead, to reign over the souls of men in the next life, and
this necessity has been supplied in various ways. Of the
deities set up as lords of Deadman's Land, some are beings
whose original meaning is obscure. Some are distinctly
nature-deities appointed to this office, often for local reasons,
as happening to belong to the regions where the dead take

*

1 Macpherson, ' India,' pp. 90, 360.
1 Doolittle, ' Chinese,' vol. i. p. 267.

8 Welcker, ' Griech. Gotterl.' vol. i. p. 413. Cox, ' Myth, of Aryan N.,'
vol. ii. pp. 254, 311.



GOD OF DEAD. 309

up their abode. Some, again, are as distinctly the deified
souls of men. The two first classes may be briefly instanced
together in America, where the light-side and shadow-side
(as Dr. J. G. Miiller well calls them) of the conception of a
future life are broadly contrasted in the definitions of the
Lord of the Dead. Among the Northern Indians this may
be Tarenyawagon the Heaven-God, identified with the Great
Spirit, who receives good warriors in his happy hunting-
grounds, or his grandmother, the Death-goddess Atahentsic. 1
In Brazil, the Under-world-god, who places good warriors
and sorcerers in Paradise, contrasts with Aygnan the evil
deity who takes base and cowardly Tupi souls, 2 much as
the Mexican Tlaloc, Water-god and lord of the earthly
paradise, contrasts with Mictlanteuctli, ruler of the dismal
dead-land in the shades below. 3 In Peru there has been
placed on record a belief that the departed spirits went to
be with the Creator and Teacher of the World ' Bring us
too near to thee . . . that we may berortunateTbeing near
to thee, O Uira-cocha ! ' There are^a%) statements as to
an under-world of shades, the land^of the demon Supay. 4
Accounts of this class must often be suspected of giving
ideas mis-stated under European influence, or actually
adopted from Europeans, but there is in some a look of
untouched genuineness. Thus in Polynesia, the idea of a
Devil borrowed from colonists or missionaries may be sus-
pected in such a figure as the evil deity Wiro, chief of
Reigna, the New Zealander's western world of departed
souls. But few conceptions of deity are more quaintly
original than that of the Samoan deity Saveasiuleo, at once



1 J. G. Muller, ' Amer. Urrel.' pp. 137, &c., 272, 286, &c., 500, &c. See
Sproat, p. 213 (Ahts), cited ante, p. 85. Chay-her signifies not only the
world below, but Death personified as a boneless greybeard who wanders at
night stealing men's souls away.

* Lery, ' Bresil,' p. 234.

8 Clavigero, vol. ii. pp. 14, 17; Brasseur, ' Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 495.

* ' Rites and Laws of Yncas,' tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, pp. 32, 48
(prayer from MS. communication by C. R. M.); Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. ii.
c. 2, 7 ; Brinton, ' Myths of New World,' p. 251.



310 ANIMISM.

ruler of destinies of war and other affairs of men and
chief of the subterranean Bulotu, with the human upper
half of his body reclining in his great house in company
with the spirits of departed chiefs, while his tail or extremity
stretches far away into the sea, in the shape of an eel or
serpent. Under a name corresponding dialectically (Siuleo
= Hikuleo), this composite being reappears in the kindred
myths of the neighbouring group, the Tonga Islands. The
Tongan Hikuleo has his home in the spirit-land of Bulotu,
here conceived as out in the far western sea. Here we are
told the use of his tail. His body goes away on journeys,
but his tail remains watching in Bulotu, and thus he is
aware of what goes on in more places than one. Hikuleo
used to carry off the first-born sons of Tongan chiefs, to
people his island of the blest, and he so thinned the ranks
of the living that at last the other gods were moved to
compassion. Tangaloa and Maui seized Hikuleo, passed a
strong chain round him, and fastened one end to heaven
and the other to earth. Another god of the dead, of well-
marked native type, is the Rarotongan Tiki, an ancestral
deity as in New Zealand, to whose long house, a place
of unceasing joys, the dead are to find their way. 1 Among
Turanian tribes, there are Samoyeds who believe in a deity
called 'A,' dwelling in impenetrable darkness, sending disease
and death to men and reindeer, and ruling over a crowd of
spirits which are manes of the dead. Tatars tell of the
nine Irle-Chans, who in their gloom)' subterranean kingdom
not only rule over souls of the dead, but have at their com-
mand a multitude of ministering spirits, visible and invisible.
In the gloomy under-world of the Finns reigns Mana or
Tuoni, a being whose nature is worked out by personifica-
tion from the dismal dead-land or death itself. 2 Much the

1 Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 237 ; Farmer, 'Tonga,' p. 126. Yate, 'New
Zealand,' p. 140 ; J. Williams, ' Missionary Enterprise,' p. 145. See
Schirren, ' Wandersagen der Neuseelander,' p. 89 ; Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i.
p. 246.

* Castren, 'Finn. Myth.' pp. 128, 147, 155; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 171
(Africa).



DIVINE ANCESTOR. 311

same may be said of the Greek Aides, Hades, and the
Scandinavian Hel, whose names, perhaps not so much by
confusion as with a sense of their latent significance, have
become identified in language with the doleful abodes over
which a personifying fancy set them to preside. 1 As ap-
propriately, though working out a different idea, the ancient
Egyptians conceived their great solar deity to rule in the
regions of his western under-world Osiris is Lord of the
Dead in Amenti. 2

In the world's assembly of great gods, an important place
must be filled up by the manes-worshipper in logical
development of his special system. The theory of family
manes, carried back to tribal gods, leads to the recognition
of superior deities of the nature of Divine Ancestor or First
Man, and it is of course reasonable that such a being, if
recognized, should sometimes fill the place of lord of the
dead, whose ancestral chief he is. There is an anecdote
among the Mandans told by Prince Maximilian von Wied,
which brings into view conceptions lying in the deepest
recesses of savage religion, the idea of the divine first
ancestor, the mythic connexion of the sun's death and
descent into the under-world, with the like fate of man and
the nature of the spiritual intercourse between man's own
soul and his deity. The First Man, it is said, promised
the Mandans to be their helper in time of need, and then
departed into the West. It came to pass that the Mandans
were attacked by foes. One Mandan would send a bird to
the great ancestor to ask for help, but no bird could fly so
far. Another thought a look would reach him, but the hills
walled him in. Then said a third, thought must be the
safest way to reach the First Man. He wrapped himself in
his buffalo-robe, fell down, and spoke, ' I think I have
thought I come back.' Throwing off the fur, he was
bathed in sweat. The divine helper he had called on in his

1 Welcker, ' Griech. Gotterl.' vol. i. p. 395 ; Roscher, s.v. ' Hades.'
Grimm, ' Deutsch. Myth.' p. 288.

2 Brugsch, ' Religion der alten Aegypter ' ; ' Book of Dead,'



312 ANIMISM.

distress appeared. 1 There is instructive variety in the ways
in which the lower American races work out the conception
of the divine forefather. The Mingo tribes revere and
make offerings to the First Man, he who was saved at the
great deluge, as a powerful deity under the Master of Life,
or even as identified with him ; some Mississippi Indians
said that the First Man ascended into heaven, and thunders
there ; among the Dog-ribs, he was creator of sun and
moon ; 2 Tamoi, the grandfather and ancient of heaven of
the Guaranis, was their first ancestor, who dwelt among
them and taught them to till the soil, and rose to heaven in
the east, promising to succour them on earth, and at death
to carry them from the sacred tree into a new life where
they should all meet again, and have much hunting. 3

Polynesia, again, has thoroughly worked the theory of
divine ancestors into the native system of multiform and
blending nature-deities. Men are sprung from the divine
Maui, whom Europeans have therefore called the ' Adam
of New Zealand,' or from the Rarotongan Tiki, who seems
his equivalent (Mauitiki), and who again is the Tii of
the Society Islands ; it is, however, the son of Tii who*
precisely represents a Polynesian Adam, for his name is
Taata, i.e., Man, and he is the ancestor of the human race.
There is perhaps also reason to identify Maui and the First
Man with Akea, first King of Hawaii, who at his earthly
death descended to rule over his dark subterranean kingdom,
where his subjects are the dead who recline under the
spreading kou-trees, and drink of the infernal rivers, and
feed on lizards and butterflies.* In the mythology of Kam-
chatka, the relation between the Creator and the First Man
is one not of identity but of parentage. Among the sons of

1 Pr. Max. v. Wied, ' N. Amerika,' vol. ii. p. 157.

* J. G. Mviller, ' Amer. Urrel.' pp. 133, &c., 228, 255. Catlin, ' N. A. Ind.'
vol. i. pp. 159, 177 ; Pr. Max v. Wied, vol. ii. pp. 149, &c. Compare Sproat,
' Savage Life,' p. 179 (Quawteaht the Great Spirit is also First Man).

8 D'Orbigny, ' L'Homme Amiricain,' vol. ii. p. 319.

4 Schirren,' ' Wandersagen der Neuseelander,' p. 64, &c., 88, &c. Ellis,
' Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. HI, vol. iv. pp. 145, 366.



DIVINE ANCESTOR. 313

Kutka the Creator is Haetsh the First Man, who dwelt on
earth, and died, and descended into Hades to be chief of
the under-world ; there he receives the dead and new-risen
Kamchadals, to continue a life like that of earth in his
pleasant subterranean land where mildness and plenty pre-
vail, as they did in the regions above in the old days when
the Creator was still on earth. 1 Among all the lower races
who have reasoned out this divine ancestor, none excel
those consistent manes-worshippers, the Zulus. Their
worship of the manes of the dead has not only made the
clan-ancestors of a few generations back into tribal deities
(Unkulunkulu), but beyond these, too far off and too little
known for actual worship, yet recognized as the original
race-deity and identified with the Creator, stands the First
Man, he who ' broke off in the beginning,' the Old-Old-
One, the great Unkulunkulu. While the Zulu's most
intense religious emotions are turned to the ghosts of the
departed, while he sacrifices his beloved oxen and prays
with agonising entreaty to his grandfather, and carries his
tribal worship back to those ancestral deities whose praise-
giving names are still remembered, the First Man is beyond
the reach of such rites. ' At first we saw that we were
made by Unkulunkulu. But when we were ill we did not
worship him, nor ask anything of him. We worshipped
those whom we had seen with our eyes, their death and

their life among us Unkulunkulu had no longer a

son who could worship him ; there was no going back to
the beginning, for people increased, and were scattered
abroad, and each house had its own connections ; there
was no one who said, " For my part I am of the house of
Unkulunkulu." ' Nay more, the Zulus who would not dare
to affront an ' idhlozi,' a common ghost, that might be
angry and kill them, have come to make open mock of the
name of the great first ancestor. When the grown-up
people wish to talk privately or eat something by them-
selves, it is the regular thing to send the children out to

1 Stcller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 271.



314 ANIMISM.

call at the top of their voices for Unkulunkulu. ' The
name of Unkulunkulu has no respect paid to it among black
men ; for his house no longer exists. It is now like
the name of a very old crone, who has no power to do
even a little thing for herself, but sits continually where she
sat in the morning till the sun sets. And the children
make sport of her, for she cannot catch them and flog them,
but only talk with her mouth. Just so is the name of Un-
kulunkulu when all the children are told to go and call him.
He is now a means of making sport of children.' 1

In Aryan religion, the divinities just described give us
analogues for the Hindu Yama, throughout his threefold
nature as First Man, as solar God of Hades, as Judge of the
Dead. Professor Max Miiller thus suggests his origin,
which may indeed be inferred from his being called the
child of Vivasvat, himself the Sun : ' The sun, conceived
as setting or dying every day, was the first who had
trodden the path of life from East to West the first
mortal the first to show us the way when our course is
run, and our sun sets in the far West. Thither the fathers
followed Yama ; there they sit with him rejoicing, and
thither we too shall go when his messengers (day and night)

have found us out Yama is said to have crossed the

rapid waters, to have shown the way to many, to have first
known the path on which our fathers crossed over.' It is
a perfectly consistent myth-formation, that the solar Yama
should become the first of mortals who died and discovered
the way to the other world, who guides other man thither
and assembles them in a home which is secured to them for
ever. As representative of death, Yama had even in early
Aryan times his aspects of terror, and in later Indian theo-
logy he becomes not only the Lord but the awful Judge of
the Dead, whom some modern Hindus are said to worship
alone of all the gods, alleging that their future state is to
be determined only by Yama, and that they have nothing
therefore to hope or fear from any beside him. In these

1 Call away, ' Religion of Amazulu,' pp. 1-104.



DIVINE ANCESTOR. 315

days, Hindu and Parsi in Bombay are learning from
scholars in Europe the ancient connexion of their long
antagonistic faiths, and have to hear that Yama son of
Visavat sitting on his awful judgment-seat of the dead, to
reward the good and punish the wicked with hideous
tortures, and Yima son of Vivanhao who in primaeval days
reigned over his happy deathless kingdom of good Zarathu-
strian men, are but two figures developed in the course of
ages out of one and the same Aryan nature-myth. 1 Within
the limits of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem theology, the
First Man scarcely occupies more than a place of pre-
cedence among the human race in Hades or in Heaven, not
the high office of Lord of the Dead. Yet that tendency to
deify an ideal ancestor, which we observe to act so strongly
on lower races, has taken effect also here. The Rabbinical
Adam is a gigantic being reaching from earth to heaven, for
the definition of whose stature Rabbi Eliezer cites Deute-
ronomy iv. 32, ' God made man (Adam) upon the earth,
and from one end of heaven to the other.' 1 It is one of
the familiar episodes of the Koran, how the angels were
bidden to bow down before Adam, the regent of Allah upon
earth, and how Eblis (Diabolus) swelling with pride, refused
the act of adoration.* Among the Gnostic sect of the
Valentinians, Adam the primal man in whom the Deity
bad revealed himself, stood as earthly representative of the
Demiurge, and was even counted among the ^Eons.*

The figures of the great deities of Polytheism, thus
traced in outline according to the determining idea on
which each is shaped, seem to show that conceptions
originating under rude and primitive conditions of human
thought and passing thence into the range of higher culture,

1 ' Rig-Veda,' x. 'Atharva-Veda,' xviii. Max Miiller, ' Lectures,' and Ser.

P-5'4-

Ztschr.

Avesta

1 Eisenmenger, part i. p. 365.

8 Koran, ii. 28, vii. 10, &c.

4 Neander, ' Hist, of Chr.' vol. ii. pp. 81, 109, 174.




3l6 ANIMISM.

may suffer in the course of ages the most various fates, to
be expanded, elaborated, transformed, or abandoned. Yet
the philosophy of modern ages still to a remarkable degree
follows the primitive courses of savage thought, even as the
highways of our land so often follow the unchanging tracks
of barbaric roads. Let us endeavour timidly and circum-
spectly to trace onward from savage times the courses of
vast and pregnant generalization which tend towards the
two greatest of the world's schemes of religious doctrine,
the systems of Dualism and Monotheism.

Rudimentary forms of Dualism, the antagonism of a Good
and Evil Deity, are well known among the lower races of
mankind. The investigation of these savage and barbaric
doctrines, however, is a task demanding peculiar caution.
The Europeans in contact with these rude tribes since their
discovery, themselves for the most part holding strongly
dualistic forms of Christianity, to the extent of practically
subjecting the world to the contending influences of armies
of good and evil spirits under the antagonistic control of
God and Devil, were liable on the one hand tomis take
and exaggerate savage ideas in this direction, so that their
records of native religion can only be accepted with reserve,
while on the other hand there is no doubt that dualistic
ideas have been largely introduced and developed among the
savages themselves, under this same European influence.
For instance, among the natives of Australia, we hear of
the great deity Nambajandi who dwells in his heavenly
paradise, where the happy shades of black men feast and
dance and sing for evermore ; over against him stands the
great evil being Warrugura, who dwells in the nethermost
regions, who causes the great calamities which befall man-
kind, and whom the natives represent with horns and tail,
although no homed beast is indigenous in the land. 1 There
may be more or less native substratum in all this, but the
hints borrowed from popular Christian ideas are unmistake-

1 Oldfield in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 228. See also Eyre, vol. ii. p. 356 ;
Lang, ' Queensland,' p. 444.



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY, 317

able. Thus also, among the North American Indians, the
native religion was modified under the influence of ideas
borrowed from the white men, and there arose a full
dualistic scheme, of which Loskiel, a Moravian missionary
conversant especially with Algonquin and Iroquois tribes,
gives the following suggestive particulars, dating from 1794.
' They (the Indians) first received in modern times through
the Europeans the idea of the Devil, the Prince of Darkness.
They consider him as a very mighty spirit, who can only
do evil, and therefore call him the Evil One. Thus
they now believe in a great good and a great evil spirit ;
to the one they ascribe all good, and to the other all evil.
About thirty years ago, a remarkable change took place in
the religious opinions of the Indians. Some preachers of
their own nation pretended to have received revelations
from above, to have travelled into heaven, and conversed
with God. They gave different accounts of their journey
to heaven, but all agreed in this, that no one could arrive
there without great danger ; for the road runs close by
the gates of hell. There the Devil lies in ambush, and
snatches at every one who is going to God. Now those
who have passed by this dangerous place unhurt, come first
to the Son of God, and from him to God himself, from
whom they pretend to have received a commandment, to
instruct the Indians in the way to heaven. By them
the Indians were informed that heaven was the dwelling
of God, and hell that of the Devil. Some of these
preachers had not indeed reached the dwelling of God,
but professed to have approached near enough to hear the
cocks in heaven crow, or to see the smoke of the chimneys
in heaven, &c., &C.' 1

Such unequivocal proofs that savage tribes can adopt and
work into the midst of their native beliefs the European
doctrine of the Good and Evil Spirit, must induce us to
criticize keenly all recorded accounts of the religion of un-

1 Loskiel, ' Gesch. der Mission unter den Ind. in Nord-Amer.' part i.
ch. 3.



3l8 ANIMISM.

cultured tribes, lest we should mistake the confused reflexion
of Christendom for the indigenous theology of Australia or
Canada. It is the more needful to bring this state of things
into the clearest light, in order that the religion of the lower
tribes may be placed in its proper relation to the religion
of the higher nations. Genuine savage faiths do in fact
bring to our view what seem to be rudimentary forms of
ideas which underlie dualistic theological schemes among
higher nations. It is certain that even among rude savage
hordes, native thought has already turned toward the deep
problem of good and evil. Their crude though earnest
speculation has already tried to solve the great mystery
which still resists the efforts of moralists and theologians.
But as in general the animistic doctrine of the lower races
is not yet an ethical institution, but a philosophy of man
and nature, so savage dualism is not yet a theory of abstract
moral principles, but a theory of pleasure or pain, profit or
loss, affecting the individual man, his family, or at the
utmost stretch, his people. This narrow and rudimentary
distinction between good and evil was not unfairly stated by
the savage who explained that if any body took away his wife,
that would be bad, but if he himself took someone's else.that
would be good. Now by the savage or barbarian mind, the
spiritual beings which by their personal action account for
the events of life and the operations of nature, are apt to
be regarded as kindly or hostile, sometimes or always, like
the human beings on whose type they are so obviously
modelled. In such a case, we may well judge by the safe
analogy of disembodied human souls, and it appears that
these are habitually regarded as sometimes friends and
sometimes foes of the living. Nothing could be more con-
clusive in this respect than an account of the three days'
battle between two factions of Zulu ghosts for the life of
a man and wife whom the one rpiritual party desired to
destroy and the other to save ; the defending spirits pre-
vailed, dug up the bewitched charm-bags which had been
buried to cause sympathetic disease, and flung these objects



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 3IQ

into the midst of the assembly of the people watching in
silence, just as the spirits now fling real flowers at a table-
rapping stance. 1 For spirits less closely belonging to the
definition of ghosts, may be taken Rochefort's remarks in the
I7th century as to the two sorts of spirits, good and bad,
recognized by the Caribs of the West Indies. This writer
declares that their good spirits or divinities are in fact so
many demons who seduce them and keep them enchained
in their damnable servitude ; but nevertheless, he says,
the people themselves do distinguish them from their evil
spirits.* Nor can we pronounce this distinction of theirs
unreasonable, learning from other authorities that it was
the office of some of these spirits to attend men as familiar
genii, and of others to inflict diseases. After the numerous
details which have incidentally been cited in the present
volumes, it will be needless to offer farther proof that
spiritual beings are really conceived by savages and barba-
rians as ranged in antagonistic ranks as good and evil, i.e.,
friendly and hostile to themselves. The interesting enquiry
on which it is here desirable to collect evidence, is this :
how far are the doctrines of the higher nations anticipated
in principle among the lower tribes, in the assignment of
the conduct of the universe to two mighty hostile beings, in
whom the contending powers of good and evil are personi-
fied, the Good Deity and the Evil Deity, each the head
and ruler of a spiritual host like-minded ? The true answer
seems to be that savage belief displays to us the primitive
conceptions which, when developed in systematic form and
attached to ethical meaning, take their place in religious
systems of which the Zoroastrian is the type.

First, when in district after district two special deities
with special native names are contrasted in native religion
as the Good and Evil Deity, it is in some cases easier to
explain these beings as native at least in origin, than to
suppose that foreign intercourse should have exerted the

1 Callaway, ' Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 348.

* Rochefort, ' lies Antilles,' p. 416. See J. G. Muller, p. 207.



320 ANIMISM.

consistent and far-reaching influence needed to introduce
them. Second, when the deities in question are actually
polytheistic gods, such as Sun, Moon, Heaven, Earth, con-
sidered as of good or evil, i.e., favourable or unfavourable
aspect, this looks like native development, not innovation
derived from a foreign religion ignoring such divinities.
Third, when it is held that the Good Deity is remote and
otiose, but the Evil Deity present and active, and worship
is therefore directed especially to the propitiation of the
hostile principle, we have here a conception which appears
native in the lower culture, rather than derived from the
higher culture to which it is unfamiliar and even hateful.
Now Dualism, as prevailing among the lower races, will be
seen in a considerable degree to assert its originality by
satisfying one or more of these conditions.

There have been recorded among the Indians of North
America a group of mythic beliefs, which display the funda-
mental idea of dualism in the very act of germinating in
savage religion. Yet the examination of these myths leads
us first to destructive criticism of a picturesque but not
ancient member of the series. An ethnologist, asked to
point out the most striking savage dualistic legend of the
world, would be likely to name the celebrated Iroquois myth
of the Twin Brethren. The current version of this legend
is that set down in 1825 by the Christian chief of the Tus-
caroras, David Cusick, as the belief of his people. Among
the ancients, he relates, there were two worlds, the lower
world in darkness and possessed by monsters, the upper
world inhabited by mankind. A woman near her travail
sank from this upper region to the dark world below. She
alighted on a Tortoise, prepared to receive her with a little
earth on his back, which Tortoise became an island. The
celestial mother bore twin sons into the dark world, and
died. The tortoise increased to a great island, and the
twins grew up. One was of gentle disposition, and was
called Enigorio, the Good Mind, the other was of insolent
character, and was named Enigonhahetgea, the Bad Mind.






GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 321

The Good Mind, not contented to remain in darkness,
wished to create a great light ; the Bad Mind desired that
the world should remain in its natural state. The Good
Mind took his dead mother's head and made it the sun, and
of a remnant of her body he made the moon. These were
to give light to the day and to the night. Also he created
many spots of light, now stars : these were to regulate the
days, nights, seasons, years. Where the light came upon
the dark world, the monsters were displeased, and hid
themselves in the depths, lest man should find them. The
Good Mind continued the creation, formed many creeks and
rivers on the Great Island, created small and great beasts
to inhabit the forests, and fishes to inhabit the waters.
When he had made the universe, he doubted concerning
beings to possess the Great Island. He formed two images
of the dust of the ground in his own likeness, male and
female, and by breathing into their nostrils gave them
living souls, and named them Ea-gwe-howe, that is ' real
people ; ' and he gave the Great Island all the animals
of game for their maintenance ; he appointed thunder
to water the earth by frequent rains ; the island became
fruitful, and vegetation afforded to the animals subsistence.
The Bad Mind went throughout the island and made high
mountains and waterfalls and great steeps, and created rep-
tiles injurious to mankind; but the Good Mind restored
the island to its former condition. The Bad Mind made
two clay images in the form of man, but while he was giving
them existence they became apes ; and so on. The Good
Mind accomplished the works of creation, notwithstanding
the imaginations of the Bad Mind were continually evil ;
thus he attempted to enclose all the animals of game in the
earth away from mankind, but his brother set them free,
and traces of them were made on the rocks near the cave
where they were shut in. At last the brethren came to
single combat for the mastery of the universe. The Good
Mind falsely persuaded the Bad Mind that whipping with
flags would destroy his own life, but he himself used the



322 ANIMISM.

deer-horns, the instrument of death. After a two days'
fight, the Good Mind slew his brother and crushed him in
the earth ; and the last words of the Bad Mind were that
he would have equal power over men's souls after death,
then he sank down to eternal doom and became the Evil
Spirit. The Good Mind visited the people, and then retired
from the earth. 1

This is a graphic tale. Its versions of the cosmic myth
of the World-Tortoise, and its apparent philosophical myth
of fossil footprints, have much mythological interest. But
its Biblical copying extends to the very phraseology, and
only partial genuineness can be allowed to its main theme.
Dr. Brinton has shown from early American writers how
much dualistic fancy has sprung up since the times of first
intercourse between natives and white men. When this
legend is compared with the earlier version given by Father
Brebeuf, missionary to the Hurons in 1636, we find its
whole complexion altered ; the moral dualism banishes ;
the names of Good and Bad Mind do not appear ; it is the
story of loskeha the White One, with his brother Tawiscara
the Dark One, and we at once perceive that Christian in-
fluence in the course of two centuries had given the tale a
meaning foreign to its real intent. Yet to go back to the
earliest sources and examine this myth of the White One
and the Dark One, proves it to be itself a perfect example of
the rise of primitive dualism in the savage mind. Father
Brebeuf 's story is as follows : Aataentsic the Moon fell
from heaven on earth, and bore two sons, Taouiscaron and
louskeha, who being grown up quarrelled ; judge, he says,
if there be not in this a touch of the death of Abel. They
came to combat, but with very different weapons. louskeha
had a stag-horn, Taouiscaron contented himself with some
wild-rose berries, persuading himself that as soon as he
should thus smite his brother, he would fall dead at his

1 Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' part v. p. 632 ; see part i. p. 316, part
vi. p. 166 ; ' Iroquois,' p. 36, see 237 ; Brinton, ' Myths of New World,'
p. 63.



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 323

feet ; but it fell out quite otherwise than he had promised
himself, and louskeha struck him so heavy a blow in the
side that the blood gushed forth in streams. The poor
wretch fled, and from his blood which fell upon the land
came the flints which the savages still call Taouiscara,
from the victim's name. From this we see it to be true
that the original myth of the two brothers, the White One
and the Dark One, had no moral element. It seems mere
nature-myth, the contest between Day and Night, for the
Hurons knew that louskeha was the Sun, even as his
mother or grandmother Aataentsic was the Moon. Yet in
the contrast between these two, the Huron mind had
already come to the rudimentary contrast of the Good and
Evil Deity. louskeha the Sun, it is expressly said, seemed
to the Indians their benefactor ; their kettle would not
boil were it not for him ; it was he who learnt from the
Tortoise the art of making fire ; without him they would
have no luck in hunting ; it is he who makes the corn
to grow. louskeha the Sun takes care for the living and
all things concerning life, and therefore, says the mis-
sionary, they say he is good. But Aataentsic the Moon,
the creatress of earth and man, makes men die and has
charge of their departed souls, and they say she is evil.
The Sun and Moon dwell together in their cabin at the end
of the earth, and thither it was that the Indians made the
mythic journey of which various episodes have been more
than once cited here ; true to their respective characters,
the Sun receives the travellers kindly and saves them from
the harm the beauteous but hurtful Moon would have done
them. Another missionary of still earlier time identifies
louskeha with the supreme deity Atahocan : ' louskeha,' he
says, ' is good and gives growth and fair weather ; his
grandmother Eatahentsic is wicked and spoils.' 1 Thus in
early Iroquois legend, the Sun and Moon, as god and god-

1 Brebeuf in ' Rel. des Jisuites dans la Nouvelle France,' 1635, p. 34, 1636,
p. too. Sagard, ' Histoire du Canada,' Paris, 1636, p. 490. L. H. Morgan,
' Iroquois.' p. 156. See ante, vol. i. pp. 288, 349.



324 ANIMISM.

dess of Day and Night, had already acquired the characters
of the great friend and enemy of man, the Good and Evil
Deity. And as to the related cosmic legend of Day and
Night, contrasted in the persons of the two brothers, the
White One and the Dark One, though this was originally
pure unethic nature-myth, yet it naturally took the same
direction among the half-Europeanized Indians of later
times, becoming a moral myth of Good and Evil. The idea
comes to full maturity in the modern shaping of Iroquois
religion, where the good and great deity Hawenneyu the
Ruler has opposed to him a rival deity keeping the same
name as in the myth, Hanegoategeh the Evil-minded. We
have thus before us the profoundly interesting fact, that
the rude North American Indians have more than once
begun the same mythologic transition which in ancient Asia
shaped the contrast of light and darkness into the contrast
of righteousness and wickedness, by following out the same
thought which still in the European mind arrays in the
hostile forms of Light and Darkness the contending powers
of Good and Evil.

Judging by such evidence, at once of the rudimentary
dualism springing up in savage animism, and of the
tendency of this to amalgamate with similar thought
brought in by foreign intercourse, it is possible to account
for many systems of the dualistic class found in the native
religions of America. While the evidence may lead us to
agree with Waitz that the North American Indian dualism,
the most distinct and universal feature of their religion, is
not to be altogether referred to a modern Christian origin,
yet care must be taken not to claim as the result of prim-
itive religious development what shows signs of being
borrowed civilized theology. The records remain of the
Jesuit missionary teaching under which the Algonquins
came to use their native term Manitu, that is, spirit or
demon, in speaking of the Christian God and Devil as the
good and the evil Manitu. Still later, the Great Spirit and
the Evil Spirit, Kitchi Manitu and Matchi Manitu, gained



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 325

a wider place in the beliefs of North American tribes, who
combined these adopted Christian conceptions with older
native beliefs in powers of light and warmth and life and
protection, of darkness and cold and death and destruction.
Thus the two great antagonistic Beings became chiefs of the
kindly and harmful spirits pervading the world and strug-
gling for the mastery over it. Here the nature-religion of
the savage was expanded and developed rather than set on
foot by the foreigner. Among other American races, such
combinations of foreign and native religious ideas are easy
to find, though hard to analyse. In the extreme north-west,
we may doubt any native origin in the semi-Christianized
Kodiak's definition of Shljem Shoa the creator of heaven
and earth, to whom offerings were made before and after
the hunt, as contrasted with Ijak the bad spirit dwelling
in the earth. In the extreme south-east may be found more
originality among the Floridan Indians two or three cen-
turies ago, for they are said to have paid solemn worship
to the Bad Spirit Toia who plagued them with visions, but
to have had small regard for the Good Spirit, who troubles
himself little about mankind. 1 On the southern continent,
Martius makes this characteristic remark as to the rude
tribes of Brazil : ' All Indians have a lively conviction of
the power of an evil principle over them ; in many there
dawns also a glimpse of the good ; but they revere the one
less than they fear the other. It might be thought that
they hold the Good Being weaker in relation to the fate of
man than the evil.' This generalization is to some extent
supported by statements as to particular tribes. The
Macusis are said to recognize the good creator Macunaima,
' he who works by night,' and his evil adversary Epel or
Horiuch : of these people is is observed that 'All the powers
of nature are products of the Good Spirit, when they do

1 Waitz, ' Anthropologie,' vol. iii. pp. 182, 330, 335, 345 ; Le Jeune in
' Rcl. des Je"s.' 1637, p. 49 ; La Potherie, ' Hist, de 1'Amer. Septentrionale,'
Paris, 1722, vol. i. p. 121 ; J. G. Miiller, p. 149, &c. Schoolcraft, ' Indian
Tribes,' part i. p. 35, &c., 320, 412 ; Catlin, vol. i. p. 156 ; Cranz, ' Gron-
land,' p. 263.



326 ANIMISM.

not disturb the Indian's rest and comfort, but the work of
evil spirits when they do.' Uauiiloa and Locozy, the good
and evil deity of the Yumanas, live above the earth and
toward the sun ; the Evil Deity is feared by these savages,
but the Good Deity will come to eat fruit with the departed
and take their souls to his dwelling, wherefore they bury
the dead each doubled up in his great earthen pot, with
fruit in his lap, and looking toward the sunrise. Even the
rude Botocudos are thought to recognize antagonistic prin-
ciples of good and evil in the persons of the Sun and Moon. 1
This idea has especial interest from its correspondence on
the one hand with that of the Iroquois tribes, and on the
other with that of the comparatively civilized Muyscas of
Bogota, whose good deity is unequivocally a mythic Sun,
thwarted in his kindly labours for man by his wicked wife
Huythaca the Moon. 2 The native religion of Chili is said
to have placed among the subaltern deities Meulen, the
friend of man, and Huecuvu the bad spirit and author of
evil. These people can hardly have learnt from Christianity
to conceive their evil spirit as simply and fully the general
cause of misfortune : if the earth quakes, Huecuvu has given
it a shock ; if a horse tires, Huecuvu has ridden him ; if
a man falls sick, Huecuvu has sent the disease into his
body, and no man dies but that Huecuvu suffocates him.*
In Africa, again, allowing for Moslem influence, dualism
is not ill represented in native religion. An old account
from Loango describes the natives as theoretically recogniz-
ing Zambi the supreme deity, creator of good and lover of
justice, and over against him Zambi-anbi the destroyer, the
counsellor of crime, the author of loss and accident, of
disease and death. But when it conies to actual worship, as

1 Martius, ' Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. pp. 327, 485, 583, 645, see 247, 393, 427,
696. See also J. G. Miiller, ' Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 259, &c., 403, 423 ;
D'Orbigny, ' L'Homme Ame'ricain,' vol. i. p. 405, vol. ii. p. 257 ; Falkner,
'Patagonia,' p. 114; Musters, ' Patagonians,' p. 179; Fitzroy, ' Voy. of
Adventure and Beagle,' vol. i. pp. 180, 190.

1 Piedrahita, ' Hist, de Neuv. Granada,' part i. book i. ch. 3.

' Molina, ' Hist, of Chili,' voL ii. p. 84 ; Febres, ' Diccionario Chileno,' t.v.



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 327

the good god will always be favourable, it is the god of evil
who must be appeased, and it is for his satisfaction that men
abstain some from one kind of food and some from another. 1
Among accounts of the two rival deities in West Africa, one
describes the Guinea negroes as recognizing below the Su-
preme Deity two spirits (or classes of spirits), Ombwiri and
Onyambe, the one kind and gentle, doing good to men and
rescuing them from harm, the other hateful and wicked,
whose seldom mentioned name is heard with uneasiness and
displeasure.* It would be scarcely profitable, in an enquiry
where accurate knowledge of the doctrine of any insignifi-
cant tribe is more to the purpose than vague speculation on
the theology of the mightiest nation, to dwell on the enig-
matic traces of ancient Egyptian dualism. Suffice it to say
that the two brother-deities Osiris and Seti, Osiris the bene-
ficent solar divinity whose nature the blessed dead took on
them, Seti perhaps a rival national god degraded to a Typhon,
seem to have become the representative figures of a con-
trasted scheme of light and darkness, good and evil; the sculp-
tured granite still commemorates the contests of their long-
departed sects, where the hieroglyphic square-eared beast of
Seti has been defaced to substitute for it the figure of Osiris. 8
The conception of the light-god as the good deity in con-
trast to a rival god of evil, is one plainly suggested by
nature, and naturally recurring in the religions of the world.
The Khonds of Orissa may be counted its most perfect
modern exponents in barbaric culture. To their supreme
creative deity, Bura Pennu or Bella Pennu, Light-god or
Sun-god, there stands opposed his evil consort Tari Pennu
the Earth-goddess, and the history of good and evil in the
world is the history of his work and her counterwork. He
created a world paradisaic, happy, harmless ; she rebelled
against him, and to blast the lot of his new creature, man,

1 Proyart, 'Loango,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 504. Bastian, 'Mensch,'
vol. ii. p. 109. See Kolbe, ' Kaap de Goede Hoop,' part i. xxix. : Waitz,
vol. ii. p. 342 (Hottentots).

1 J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.' pp. 217, 387. Waitz, vol. ii. p. 173.

8 Birch, in Bunsen, vol. v. p. 136. Wilkinson, ' Ancient Eg.' &c.



328 ANIMISM.

she brought in disease, and poison, and all disorder, ' sow-
ing the seeds of sin in mankind as in a ploughed field.'
Death became the divine punishment of wickedness, the
spontaneously fertile earth went to jungle and rock and
mud, plants and animals grew poisonous and fierce, through-
out nature good and evil were commingled, and still the
fight goes on between the two great powers. So far all
Khonds agree, and it is on the practical relation of good
and evil that they split into their two hostile sects of Bura
and Tari. Bura's sect hold that he triumphed over Tari,
in sign of her discomfiture imposed the cares of childbirth
on her sex, and makes her still his subject instrument
wherewith to punish ; Taxi's sect hold that she still main-
tains the struggle, and even practically disposes of the hap-
piness of man, doing evil or good on her own account, and
allowing or not allowing the Creator's blessings to reach
mankind. 1

Now that the sacred books of the Zend-Avesta are open
to us, it is possible to compare the doctrines of savage
tribes with those of the great faith through which of all
others Dualism seems to have impressed itself on the
higher nations. The religion of Zarathustra was a schism
from that ancient Aryan nature-worship which is represented
in a pure and early form in the Veda, and in depravity and
decay in modern Hinduism. The leading thought of the
Zarathustrian faith was the contest of Good and Evil in the
world, a contrast typified and involved in that of Day and
Night, Light and Darkness, and brought to personal shape
in the warfare of Ahura-Mazda and Anra-Mainyu, the Good
and Evil Deity, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The prophet
Zarathustra said : ' In the beginning there was a pair of
twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity. These are
the good and the base in thought, word, and deed. Choose
one of these two spirits. Be good, not base ! ' The sacred
Vendidad begins with the record of the primaeval contest of
the two principles . Ahura-Mazda created the best of regions

1 Macpherson, ' India,' p. 84.



GOOD AND EVIL DEITY. 32Q

and lands, the Aryan home, Sogdia, Bactria, and the rest ;
Anra-Mainyu against his work created snow and pestilence,
buzzing insects and poisonous plants, poverty and sickness,
sin and unbelief. The modern Parsi, in passages of his
formularies of confession, still keeps alive the old antagonism.
I repent, he says, of all kind of sins which the evil Ahriman
produced amongst the creatures of Ormazd in opposition.
' That which was the wish of Ormazd the Creator, and I
ought to have thought and have not thought, what I ought
to have spoken and have not spoken, what I ought to have
done and have not done ; of these sins repent I with
thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as well as spiritual,
earthly as well as heavenly, with the three words : Pardon,
O Lord, I repent of sin. That which was the wish of
Ahriman, and I ought not to have thought and yet have
thought, what I ought not to have spoken and yet have
spoken, what I ought not to have done and yet have done ;
of these sins repent I with thoughts, words, and works,
corporeal as well as spiritual, earthly as well as heavenly,
with the three words : Pardon, O Lord, I repent of sin.'
. . . ' May Ahriman be broken, may Ormazd increase.' 1
The Izedis or Yezidis, the so-called Devil-worshippers, still
remain a numerous though oppressed people in Mesopotamia
and adjacent countries. Their adoration of the sun and
horror of .defiling fire accord with the idea of a Persian
origin of their religion (Persian ized = god), an origin under-
lying more superficial admixture of Christian and Moslem
elements. This remarkable sect is distinguished by a
special form of dualism. While recognizing the existence
of a Supreme Being, their peculiar reverence is given to
Satan, chief of the angelic host, who now has the means of
doing evil to mankind, and in his restoration will have the
power of rewarding them. ' Will not Satan then reward
the poor Izedis, who alone have never spoken ill of him, and
have suffered so much for him ? ' Martyrdom for the rights

1 Avesta, tr. by Spiegel. Vendidad, i. ; ' Khorda-A vesta.' xlv. xlvi,
Max Miiller, ' Lectures,' ist Ser. p. 208.

II. Y



ANIMISM.

of Satan ! exclaims the German traveller to whom an old
white-bearded devil-worshipper thus set forth the hopes of
his religion. 1

Direct worship of the Evil Principle, familiar as it is to
low barbaric races, is scarcely to be found among people
higher in civilization than these persecuted and stubborn
sectaries of Western Asia. So far as such ideas extend in
the development of religion, they seem fair evidence how
far worship among low tribes turns rather on fear than love.
That the adoration of a Good Deity should have more and
more superseded the propitiation of an Evil Deity, is the
sign of one of the great movements in the education of
mankind, a result of happier experience of life, and of
larger and more gladsome views of the system of the
universe. It is not, however, through the inactive systems
of modern Parsism and Izedism that the mighty Zoroastrian
dualism has exerted its main influence on mankind. We
must look back to long-past ages for traces of its contact
with Judaism and Christianity. It is often and reasonably
thought that intercourse between Jews and ancient Persians
was an effective agent in producing that theologic change
which differences the later Jew of the Rabbinical books from
the earlier Jew of the Pentateuch, a change in which one im-
portant part is the greater prominence of the dualistic scheme.
So in later times (about the fourth century), the contact of
Zoroastrism and Christianity appears to have been influential
in producing Manichaeism. Manichaeism is known mostly on
the testimony of its adversaries, but thus much seems clear,
that it is based on the very doctrine of the two antagonistic
principles of good and evil, of spirit and matter. It sets on
the one hand God, original good and source of good alone,
primal light and lord of the kingdom of light, and on the
other hand the Prince of Darkness, with his kingdom of
darkness, of matter, of confusion, and destruction. The
theory of ceaseless conflict between these contending

1 Layard, ' Nineveh,' vol. i. p. 297 ; Ainsworth, ' Izedii,' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.'
vol. i. p. ii.



DIVINE SUPREMACY. 33!

powers becomes a key to the physical and moral nature and
course of the universe. 1 Among Christian or semi-Christian
sects, the Manichaeans stand as representatives of dualism
pushed to its utmost development. It need scarcely be said,
however, that Christian dualism is not bounded by the
limits of this or that special sect. In so far as the Evil
Being, with his subordinate powers of darkness, is held to
exist and act in any degree in independence of the Supreme
Deity and his ministering spirits of light, so far theological
schools admit, though in widely different grades of impor-
tance, a philosophy of nature and of life which has its basis
rather in dualism than in monotheism.

We now turn to the last objects of our present survey,
those theological beliefs of the lower tribes of mankind
which point more or less distinctly toward a doctrine of
Monotheism. Here it is by no means proposed to examine
savage ideas from the point of view of doctrinal theology,
an undertaking which would demand arguments quite
beyond the present range. Their treatment is limited to
classifying the actual beliefs of the lower races, with some
ethnographic considerations as to their origin and their
relation to higher religions. For this purpose it is desir-
able to distinguish the prevalent doctrines of the uncultured
world from absolute monotheism. At the outset, care is
needed to exclude an ambiguity of which the importance
often goes unnoticed. How are the mighty but subordinate
divinities, recognized in different religions, to be classed ?
Beings who in Christian or Moslem theology would be
called angels, saints, demons, would under the same defini-
tions be called deities in polytheistic systems. This is
obvious, but we may realize it more distinctly from its
actually having happened. The Chuwashes, a race of
Tatar affinity, are stated to reverence a god of Death,
who takes to himself the souls of the departed, and whom
they call Esrel ; it is curious that Castre"n, in mentioning

1 Heausobre, ' Hist, de Manichie,' &c. Neander, ' Hist, of Christian
Religion,' vol. ii. p. 157, &c.



332 ANIMISM.

this, should fail to point out that this deity is no other than
Azrael the angel of death, adopted under Moslem influence. 1
Again, in the mixed Pagan and Christian religion of the
Circassians, which at least in its recently prevalent form
would be reckoned polytheistic, there stand beneath the
Supreme Being a number of mighty subordinate deities, of
whom the principal are lele the Thunder-god, Tleps the
Fire-god, Seoseres the god of Wind and Water, Misitcha
the Forest-god, and Mariam the Virgin Mary. 1 If the
monotheistic criterion be simply made to consist in the
Supreme Deity being held as creator of the universe and
chief of the spiritual hierarchy, then its application to
savage and barbaric theology will lead to perplexing conse-
quences. Races of North and South America, of Africa,
of Polynesia, recognizing a number of great deities, are
usually and reasonably considered polytheists, yet under
this definition their acknowledgment of a Supreme Creator,
of which various cases will here be shown, would entitle
them at the same time to the name of monotheists. To
mark off the doctrines of monotheism, closer definition
is required, assigning the distinctive attributes of deity to
none save the Almighty Creator. It may be declared that,
in this strict sense, no savage tribe of monotheists has been
ever known. Nor are any fair representatives of the lower
culture in a strict sense pantheists. The doctrine which
they do widely hold, and which opens to them a course
tending in one or other of these directions, is polytheism
culminating in the rule of one supreme divinity. High
above the doctrine of souls, of divine manes, of local nature-
spirits, of the great deities of class and element, there are
to be discerned in barbaric theology shadowings, quaint or
majestic, of the conception of a Supreme Deity, henceforth
to be traced onward in expanding power and brightening
glory along the history of religion. It is no unimportant
task, partial as it is, to select and group the typical data

1 Castrin, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 155.

1 Klemm, ' Cultur-Gesch." vol. vi. p. 85.



SUPREME DEITY. 333

which show the nature and position of the doctrine of
supremacy, as it comes into view within the lower culture.
On the threshold of the investigation, there meets us the
same critical difficulty which obstructs the study of primi-
tive dualism. Among low tribes who have been in contact
with Christianity or Mohammedanism, how are we to tell to
what extent, under this foreign influence, dim, uncouth
ideas of divine supremacy may have been developed into
more cultured forms, or wholly foreign ideas implanted ?
We know how the Jesuit missionaries led the native
Canadians to the conception of the Great Manitu ; how
they took up the native Brazilian name of the divine
Thunder, Tupan, and adapted its meaning to convey in
Christian teaching the idea of God. Thus, again, we find
most distinctly-marked African ideas of a Supreme Deity
in the West, where intercourse with Moslems has actually
Islamized or semi-Islamized whole negro nations, and the
name of Allah is in all men's mouths. The ethnographer
must be ever on the look-out for traces of such foreign
influence in the definition of the Supreme Deity acknow-
ledged by any uncultured race, a divinity whose nature
and even whose name may betray his adoption from
abroad. Thus the supreme Iroquois deity, Neo or Hawa-
neu, the pre-existent creator, has been triumphantly adduced
to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds of
America. But it seems that this divinity was introduced
by the French Catholic missionaries, and that Niio is an
altered form of Dieu. 1 Among the list of supreme deities
of the lower races who are also held to be first ancestors
of man, we hear of Louquo, the uncreate first Carib, who
descended from the eternal heaven, made the flat earth, and
produced man from his own body. He lived long on earth
among men, died and came to life again after three days,

and returned to heaven.* It would be hardly reasonable

*

1 ' Etudes Philologiques sur quelques Langues Sauvages de I'Am^rique,'
par N. O. (J. A. Cuoq.) Montreal, 1866, p. 14. Brinton, ' Myths of New
World,' p. 53. Schoolcraft, ' Iroquois,' p. 33.

* De la Borde, ' Caraibes,' p. 524. J. G. Miiller, ' Amer. Urrel.' p. 228.



334 . ANIMISM.

to enumerate, among genuine deities of native West Indian
religion, a being with characteristics thus on the face of
them adopted from the religion of the white men. Yet
even in such extreme cases, it does not necessarily follow
that the definitions of these deities, vitiated as they are for
ethnographical use by foreign influence, have not to some ex-
tent a native substratum. In criticising details, moreover, it
must not be forgotten how largely the similarities in the reli-
gions of different races may be of independent origin, and
how closely allied are many ideas in the rude native theolo-
gies of savages to ideas holding an immemorial place in the
religions of their civilized invaders. For the present pur-
pose, however, it is well to dwell especially on such evidence
as by characteristic traits or early date is farthest removed
from suspicion of being borrowed from a foreign source.

In surveying the peoples of the world, the ethnographer
finds many who are not shown to have any definite concep-
tion of a supreme deity ; and even where such a conception
is placed on record, it is sometimes so vaguely asserted, or
on such questionable authority, that he can but take note
of it and pass on. In numerous cases, however, illustrated
by the following collection from different regions, certain
leading ideas, singly or blended, may be traced. There
are many savage and barbaric religions which solve their
highest problem by the simple process of raising to divine
primacy one of the gods of polytheism itself. Even the
system of the manes-worshipper has been stretched to reach
the limit of supreme deity, in the person of the primaeval
ancestor. More frequently, it is the nature-worshipper's
principle which has prevailed, giving to one of the great
nature-deities the precedence of the rest. Here, by no re-
condite speculation, but by the plain teaching of nature,
the choice has for the most part lain between two mighty
visible divinities, the all-animating Sun and the all-encom-
passing Heaven. In the study of such schemes, we are on
intellectual terra firma. There is among the religions of
the lower races another notable group of systems, seemingly



SUPREME DEITY. 335

in close connexion with the first. These display to us a
heavenly pantheon arranged on the model of an earthly
political constitution, where the commonalty are crowds of
human souls and other tribes of world-pervading spirits,,
the aristocracy are great polytheistic gods, and the King is
the supreme Deity. To this comparatively intelligible side
of the subject, a more perplexed and obscure side stands
contrasted. Among thoughtful men whose theory of the
soul animating the body has already led them to suppose
a diving spirit animating the huge mass of earth or sky,
this idea needs but a last expansion to become a doctrine
of the universe as animated by one greatest, all-pervad-
ing divinity, the World-Spirit. Moreover, where specula-
tive philosophy grapples with the vast fundamental
world-problem, the solution is attained by ascending from
the Many to the One, by striving to discern through and
beyond the Universe a First Cause. Let the basis of such
reasoning be laid in theological ground, then the First
Cause is realized as the Supreme Deity. In such ways,
the result of carrying to their utmost limits the animistic
conceptions which among low races and high pervade
the philosophy of religion, is to reach an idea of as it were
a soul of the world, a shaper, animator, ruler of the uni-
verse. Entering these regions of transcendental theology,
we are not to wonder that the comparative distinctness
belonging to conceptions of lower spiritual beings here
fades away. Human souls, subordinate nature-spirits, and
huge polytheistic nature-gods, carry with the defined special
functions they perform some defined character and figure,
but beyond such limits form and function blend into the
infinite and universal in the thought of supreme divinity.
To realize this widest idea, two especial ways are open.
The first way is to fuse the attributes of the great poly-
theistic powers into more or less of common personality,
thus conceiving that, after all, it is the same Highest
Being who holds up the heavens, shines in the sun, smites
his foes in the thunder, stands first in the human pedigree as



336 ANIMISM.

the divine ancestor. The second way is to remove the limit
of theologic speculation into the region of the indefinite
and the inane. An unshaped divine entity looming vast,
shadowy, and calm beyond and over the material world, too
benevolent or too exalted to need human worship, too huge,
too remote, too indifferent, too supine, too merely existent,
to concern himself with the petty race of men, this is a
mystic form of formlessness in which religion has not
seldom pictured the Supreme.

Thus, then, it appears that the theology of the lower races
already reaches its climax in conceptions of a highest of the
gods, and that these conceptions in the savage and barbaric
world are no copies stamped from one common type, but
outlines widely varying among mankind. The degenera-
tion-theory, in some instances no doubt with justice, may
claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remnants of
higher religions. Yet for the most part, the development-
theory is competent to account for them without seeking
their origin in grades of culture higher than those in which
they are found existing. Looked upon as products of
natural religion, such doctrines of divine supremacy seem
in no way to transcend the powers of the low-cultured mind
to reason out, nor of the low-cultured imagination to deck
with mythic fancy. There have existed in times past,
and do still exist, savage or barbaric peoples who hold
such views of a highest god as they may have attained to
of themselves, without the aid of more cultured nations.
Among these races, Animism has its distinct and consistent
outcome, and Polytheism its distinct and consistent com-
pletion, in the doctrine of a Supreme Deity.

The native religions of South America and the West
Indies display a well-marked series of types. The primacy
of the Sun was long ago well stated by the Moluches when
a Jesuit missionary preached to them, and they replied,
' Till this hour, we never knew nor acknowledged anything
greater or better than the Sun.' 1 So when a later mis-

1 Dobrizhoffer, ' Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 89.



SUPREME DEITY. 337

sionary argued with the chief of the Tobas, ' My god is
good and punishes wicked people,' the chief replied, ' My
God (the Sun) is good likewise ; but he punishes nobody,
satisfied to do good to all.' 1 In various manifestations,
moreover, there reigns among barbarians a supreme being
whose characteristics are those of the Heaven-god. It
is thus with the Tamoi of the Guaranis, ' that beneficent
deity worshipped in his blended character of ancestor of
mankind and ancient of heaven, lord of the celestial
paradise.' 1 It is so with the highest deity of the Arauca-
nians, Pillan the Thunder or the Thunderer, called also
Huenu-Pillan or Heaven-Thunder, and Vuta-gen or Great
Being. ' The universal government of Pillan,' says
Molina, ' is a prototype of the Araucanian polity. He is
the great Toqui (Governor) of the invisible world, and as
such has his Apo-Ulmenes, and his Ulmenes, to whom he
entrusts the administration of affairs of less importance.
These ideas are certainly very rude, but it must be acknow-
ledged that the Araucanians are not the only people who
have regulated the things of heaven by those of the earth.'*
A different but not less characteristic type of the Supreme
Deity is placed on record among the Caribs, a beneficent
power dwelling in the skies, reposing in his own happi-
ness, careless of mankind, and by them not honoured nor
adored. 4

The theological history of Peru, in ages before the
Spanish conquest, has lately had new light thrown on it by
the researches of Mr. Markham. Here the student comes
into view of a rivalry full of interest in the history of
barbaric religion, the rivalry between the Creator and
the divine Sun. In the religion of the Incas, precedence
was given to Uiracocha, called Pachacamac, ' Creator of
the World.' The Sun (with whom was coupled his sister-

1 Hutchinson, ' Chaco Ind.' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 327.

* D'Orbigny, ' L'Homme Ame'ricain,' vol. ii. p. 319.

* Molina, ' Hist, of Chili,' vol. ii. p. 84, &c. Compare Febres, ' Diccionario
Chileno.'

* Rochefort, ' lies Antilles,' p. 415. Musters, ' Patagonians,' p. 179.



338 ANIMISM.

wife the Moon) was the divine ancestor, the dawn or origin,
the totem or lar, of the Inca family. The three great
deities were the Creator, Sun, and Thunder ; their images
were brought out together at great festivals into the square
of Cuzco, llamas were sacrificed to all three, and they could
be addressed in prayer together, ' O Creator, and Sun, and
Thunder, be for ever young, multiply the people, and let
them always be at peace.' Yet the Thunder and Light-
ning was held to come by the command of the Creator, and
the following prayer shows clearly that even ' our father the
Sun ' was but his creature :

' Uiracocha I Thou who gavest being to the Sun, and afterwards laid
let there be day and night. Raise it and cause it to shine, and preserve
that which thou hast created, that it may give light to men. Grant this,
Uiracocha !

' Sun ! Thou who art in peace and safety, shine upon us, keep us from
sickness, and keep. us in health and safety.'

Among the transitions of religion, however, it is not strange
that a subordinate God, by virtue of his nearer intercourse
and power, should usurp the place of the supreme deity.
Among the various traces of this taking place under the
Incas, are traditions of the great temple at Cuzco called

The Golden Place,' where Manco Ccapac originally set up
aflat oval golden plate to signify the Creator ; Mayta Ccapac,
it is said, renewed the Creator's symbol, but Huascar Inca
took it down, and set up in its stead in the place of honour
a round golden plate like the sun with rays. The famous
temple itself, Ccuricancha the ' Golden Place,' was known
to the Spaniards as the Temple of the Sun ; no wonder that
the idea has come to be so generally accepted, that the Sun
was the chief god of Peru. There is even on record a
memorable protest made by one Inca, who dared to deny
that the Sun could be the maker of all things, comparing
him to a tethered beast that must make ever the same daily
round, and to an arrow that must go whither it is sent, not

whither it will. But what availed philosophic protest, even
from the head of church and state himself, against a state



SUPREME DEITY. 339

church of which the world has seldom seen the equal for
stiff and solid organization ? The Sun reigned in Peru till
Pizarro overthrew him, and his splendid golden likeness
came down from the temple wall to be the booty of a Casti-
lian soldier, who lost it in one night at play. 1

Among rude tribes of the North American continent,
evidence of the primacy of the divine Sun is not unknown.
Father Hennepin's account of the Sioux worshipping the
Sun as the Creator is explicit enough, and agrees with the
argument of the modern Shawnees, that the Sun animates
everything, and therefore must be the Master of Life or
Great Spirit. 8 It is the widespread belief in this Great
Spirit which has long and deservedly drawn the attention
of European thinkers to the native religions of the North
American tribes. The name of the Great Spirit originates
with the equivalent term Kitchi Manitu in the language
of the Algonquin Indians. Before the European intercourse
in the I7th century, these tribes had indeed no deity so
called, but as has been already pointed out, the term came
first into use by the application of the native word manitu,
meaning demon or deity, to the Christian God. During
the following centuries, the name of the Great Spirit, with
the ideas belonging to the name, travelled far and wide
over the continent. It became the ordinary expression
of Europeans in their descriptions of Indian religion, and
in discourse carried on in English words between Europeans
and Indians, and was more or less naturalized among the
Indians themselves. On their religions it had on the one

1 ' Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas,' trans, from the original
Spanish MSS., and ed. by C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Soc. 1873, p. ix. 5, 16,
30, 76, 84, 1 54, &c. The above remarks are based on the early evidence here
printed for the first time, and on private suggestions for which I am also
indebted to Mr. Markham. The title Pachacamac has been also considered
to mean Animator or Soul of the World, camani=I create, camac=creator,
cama= soul (note to 2nd ed.). Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. i., ii. c. 2, iii. c. 20 ;
Herrera, dec. v. 4 ; Brinton, ' Myths of New World,' p. 177, see 142 ; Rivero
and Tschudi, ' Peruvian Antiquities,' ch. vii. ; Waitz, vol. iv. p. 447 ; J. G.
Mailer, p. 317, &c.

1 Sagard, ' Hist, du Canada,' p. 490. Hennepin, ' Voy. dans I'Ame'rique,'
p. 302. Gregg, ' Commerce of Prairies,' vol. ii. p. 237.



34O ANIMISM.

hand a transforming influence, while on the other hand, as
is usual in the combination of religions, the new divinity
incorporated into himself the characteristics of native
divinities, so that native ideas remained in part repre-
sented in him. A divine being whose characteristics are
often so unlike what European intercourse would have
suggested, could be hardly altogether of foreign origin. 1
Again, among the Greenlanders, Torngarsuk or Great
Spirit (his name is an augmentative of ' torngak '
' demon ') was known to the early Danish missionary
Egede as the oracular deity of the angekoks, to whose
under-world souls hope to descend at death. He so far
held the place of supreme deity in the native mind, that,
as Cranz the missionary relates somewhat afterwards,
many Greenlanders hearing of God and his almighty
power were apt to fall on the idea that it was their Torn-
garsuk who was meant ; but he was eventually identified
with the Devfl.* In like manner, Algonquin Indians, early
in the iyth century, hearing of the white man's Deity,
identified him with one known to their own native belief,
Atahocan the Creator. When Le Jeune the missionary talked
to them of an almighty creator of heaven and earth, they
began to say to one another, ' Atahocan, Atahocan, it is
Atahocan ! ' The traditional idea of such a being seems in-
deed to have lain in utter mythic vagueness in their thoughts,
for they had made his name into a verb, ' Nitatahocan/
meaning, ' I tell a fable, an old fanciful story.'*

In late times, Schoolcraft represents the Great Spirit as a
Soul of the Universe, inhabiting and animating all things,
recognized in rocks and trees, in cataracts and clouds, in
thunder and lightning, in tempest and zephyr, becoming
incarnate in birds and beasts as titular deities, existing in
the world under every possible form, animate and inani-

1 Le Jeune, ' Rel. des Jes.' 1637, P- 49 5 Brinton, p. 52 ; Lafitau, ' Moeur*
des Sauvages Ameriquains,' vol. i. pp. 126, 145 (note to 3rd ed.).

* Egede, ' Descr. of Greenland,' ch. xviii. ; Cranz, ' Gronland,' p. 263 ;
Kink, ' Eskimoiske Eventyr,' &c., p. 28.

Le Jeune, 1633, p. 16 ; 1634, p. 13.






SUPREME DEITY. 34!

mate. 1 Whether the Red Indian mind even in modern
times really entertained this extreme pantheistic scheme,
we may well doubt. In early times of American discovery,
the records show a quite different and more usual concep-
tion of a supreme deity. Among the more noteworthy of
these older documents are the following. Jacques Cartier,
in his second Canadian voyage (1535), speaks of the people
having no valid belief in God, for they believe in one whom
they call Cudouagni, and say that he often speaks with
them, and tells them what the weather will be ; they say
that when he is angry with them he casts earth in their
eyes. Thevet's statement somewhat later is as follows :
' As to their religion, they have no worship or prayer to
God, except that they contemplate the new moon, called in
their language Osannaha, saying that Andouagni calls it
thus, sending it little by little to advance or retard the
waters. For the rest, they fully believe that there is a
Creator, greater than the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars,
and who holds all in his power. He it is whom they call
Andouagni, without however having any form or method of
prayer to him.* In Virginia about 1586, we learn from
Heriot that the natives believed in many gods, which they
call ' mantoac,' but of different sorts and degrees, also
that there is one chief god who first made other principal
gods, and afterwards the sun, moon, and stars as petty
gods. In New England, in 1622, Winslow says that they
believe, as do the Virginians, in many divine powers, yet of
one above all the rest ; the Massachusetts call their great
god Kiehtan, who made all the other gods ; he dwells far
westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when
they die ; ' They never saw Kiehtan, but they hold it a
great charge and dutie, that one age teach another ; and to
him they make feasts, and cry and sing for plentie and
victorie, or anything is good.' Another famous native

1 Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 15.

* Cartier, 'Relation;' Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 212 ; Lescarbot, ' Nouvelle
France,' p. 613. Thevet, 'Singularitez de la France Antarctique,' Paris,
1558, ch. 77. See also J. G. Miiller, p. 102. Andouagni is perhaps a mis-
copied form of Cudouagni. Other forms, Cudruagni, &c., occur.



342 ANIMISM.

American name for the supreme deity is Oki. Captain
John Smith, the hero of the colonization of Virginia in 1607,
he who was befriended by Pocahontas, ' La Belle Sauvage,'
thus describes the religion of the country, and especially of
her tribe, the Powhatans : ' There is yet in Virginia no
place discovered to be so Savage in which they haue not a
Religion, Deer, and Bow and Arrowes. All things that
are able to doe them hurt beyond their prevention, they
adore with their kinde of divine worship ; as the fire, water,
lightning, thunder, our Ordnance peeces, horses, &c. But
their chief e god they worship is the Devill. Him they call
Okee, and serue him more of feare than loue. They say
they haue conference with him, and fashion themselves as
neare to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples
they haue his image evill favouredly carved, and then
painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and
covered with a skin in such manner as the deformities may
well suit with such a God.' 1 This quaint account deserves
to be quoted at length as an example of the judgment which
a half -educated and whole-prejudiced European is apt to
pass on savage deities, which from his point of view seem
of simply diabolic nature. It is known from other sources
that Oki, a word belonging not to the Powhatan but to the
Huron language, was in fact a general name for spirit or deity.
We may judge the real belief of these Indians better from
Father Brebeuf 's description of the Heaven God, cited here in
a former chapter : they imagine in the heavens an Oki, that
is, a Demon or power ruling the seasons of the year, and
controlling the winds and waves, a being whose anger they
fear, and whom they call on in making solemn treaties. 1

1 Smith, ' Hist, of Virginia,' London, 1632, in Pinkerton, ' Voyages,'
vol. xiii. pp. 13, 1 8, 244. (New Eng.) ; see Arber's edition. Priority has been
claimed for E. Strachey (see Lang, ' Making of Religion,' p. 254), but this
copyist seems only to have copied Capt. Smith's ' Map of Virginia ' (1608).
Brinton, p. 58; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 177, &c. J. G. Miiller, pp. 99, &c. ;
Loskiel, part i. pp. 33, 43.

* Brebeuf in ' Rel. des JeV 1636, p. 107; see above, p. 255. Sagard,
p. 494 ; Cuoq, p. 176 ; J. G. Muller, p. 103. For other mention of a Supreme
Deity among North American tribes see Joutel, ' Journal du Voyage,' &c.,

aris, 1713, p. 224 (Louisiana); Sproat in 'Tr. Eth. Soc." vol. v. p. 253 .
^Vancouver's I.).



SUPREME DEITY. 343

About a century later, Father Lafitau wrote passages which
illustrate well the transformation of native animistic con-
ceptions under missionary influence into analogues of
Christian theology. Such general terms for spiritual beings
as 'old' or 'manitu' had become to him individual names
of one supreme being. ' This great Spirit, known among
the Caribs under the name of Chemiin, under that of
Manitou among the Algonquin nations, and under that of
Okki among those who speak the Huron tongue . . .' &c.
All American tribes, he says, use expressions which can only
denote God : they call him the great Spirit, sometimes
the Master and Author of Life . . .' &c. 1 The longer rude
tribes of America have been in contact with European
belief, the less confidently can we ascribe to purely native
sources the theologic scheme their religions have settled
into. Yet the Greeks towards the end of the i8th century
preserved some elements of native faith. They believed
in the Great Spirit, the Master of Breath (a being whom
Bartram represents as a soul and governor of the uni-
verse) : to him they would address their frequent prayers
and ejaculations, at the same time paying a kind of homage
to the sun, moon, and stars, as the mediators or ministers
of the Great Spirit, in dispensing his attributes for their
comfort and well-being in this life. 1 In our own day, among
the wild Comanches of the prairies, the Great Spirit, their
creator and supreme deity, is above Sun and Moon and
Earth ; towards him is sent the first puff of tobacco-smoke
before the Sun receives the second, and to him is offered
the first morsel of the feast. 8

Turning from the simple faiths of savage tribes of North
America to the complex religion of the half-civilized
Mexican nation, we find what we might naturally except,
a cumbrous polytheism complicated by mixture of several
national pantheons, and beside and beyond this, certain

1 Lafitau, ' Moeurs des Sauvages Am6riquains,' 1724, vol. i. pp. 124-6.
* Bartram in ' Tr. Amer. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. pp. 20, 26.
8 Schoolcraft, ' Ind. Tribes,' part ii. p. 127.



344 ANIMISM.

appearances of a doctrine of divine supremacy. But these
doctrines seem to have been spoken of more definitely than
the evidence warrants. A remarkable native development
of Mexican theism must be admitted, in so far as we may
receive the native historian Ixtlilxochitl's account of the
worship paid by Nezahualcoyotl, the poet king of Tezcuco,
to the invisible supreme Tloque Nahuaque, he who has all
in him, the cause of causes, in whose star-roofed pyramid
stood no idol, and who there received no bloody sacrifice,
but only flowers and incense. Yet it would have been
more satisfactory were the stories told by this Aztec
panegyrist of his royal ancestor confirmed by other re-
cords. Traces of divine supremacy in Mexican religion are
especially associated with Tezcatlipoca, ' Shining Mirror,'
a deity who seems in his original nature the Sun-God, and
thence by expansion to have become the soul of the world,
creator of heaven and earth, lord of all things, Supreme
Deity. Such conceptions may in more or less measure
have arisen in native thought, but it should be pointed out
that the remarkable Aztec religious formulas collected by
Sahagun, in which the deity Tezcatlipoca is so prominent
a figure, show traces of Christian admixture in their mate-
rial, as well as of Christian influence in their style. For
instance, all students of Mexican antiquities know the
belief in Mictlan, the Hades of the dead. But when one
of these Aztec prayer-formulas (concerning auricular con-
fession, the washing away of sins, and a new birth) makes
mention of sinners being plunged into a lake of intolerable
misery and torment, the introduction of an idea so obviously
European condemns the composition as not purely native.
The question of the actual developments of ideas verging
on pantheism or theism, among the priests and philosophers
of native Mexico, is one to be left for further criticism. 1
In the islands of the Pacific, the idea of Supreme Deity

1 Prescott, ' Mexico,' book i. ch. vi. Sahagun, ' Hist, de Nueva Espana,'
lib. vi. in Kingsborough, vol. v. ; Torquemada, ' Monarq. Ind.' lib. x. c. 14.
Waitz, vol. iv. p. 136 ; J. G. Miillcr, p. 621, &c.






SUPREME DEITY. 345

s especially manifested in that great mythologic divinity of
he Polynesian race, whom the New Zealanders call Tan-
jaroa, the Hawaiians Kanaroa, the Tongans and Samoans
fangaloa, the Georgian and Society islanders Taaroa.
students of the science of religion who hold polytheism to
>e but the mis-development of a primal idea of divine
mity, which in spite of corruption continues to pervade it,
night well choose this South Sea Island divinity as their
iptest illustration from the savage world. Taaroa, says
tfoerenhout, is their supreme or rather only god ; for all
he others, as in other known polytheisms, seem scarcely
nore than sensible figures and images of the infinite attri-
butes united in his divine person. The following is given
is a native poetic definition of the Creator. ' He was ;
faaroa was his name ; he abode in the void. No earth, no
>ky, no men. Taaroa calls, but nought answers ; and alone
sxisting, he became the universe. The props are Taaroa ;
:he rocks are Taaroa ; the sands are Taaroa ; it is thus he
limself is named.' According to Ellis, Taaroa is described
n the Leeward Islands as the eternal parentless uncreate
Creator, dwelling alone in the highest heaven, whose bodily
orm mortals cannot see, who after intervals of innumerable
easons casts off his body or shell and becomes renewed.
(t was he who created Hina his daughter, and with her aid
ormed the sky and earth and sea. He founded the world
m a solid rock, which with all the creation he sustains by
lis invisible power. Then he created the ranks of lesser
leities such as reign over sea and land and air, and govern
oeace and war, and preside over physic and husbandry, and
anoe-building, and roofing, and theft. The version from
he Windward Islands is that Taaroa's wife was the rock,
he foundation of all things, and she gave birth to earth and
ea. Now, fortunately for our understanding of this myth,
he name of Taaroa's wife, with whom he begat the lesser
.cities, was taken down in Tahiti in Captain Cook's time.
>he was a rock called Papa, and her name plainly suggests
ier identity with Papa the Earth, the wife of Rangi the



346 ANIMISM.

Heaven in the New Zealand myth of Heaven and Earth,
the great first parents. If this inference be just, then it
seems that Taaroa the Creator is no personification of a
primaeval theistic idea, but simply the divine personal
Heaven transformed under European influence into the
supreme Heaven-god. Thus, when Turner gives the Samoan
myths of Tangaloa in heaven presiding over the production
of the earth from beneath the waters, or throwing down from
the sky rocks which are now islands, the classic name by
which he calls him is that which rightly describes his nature
and mythic origin Tangaloa, the Polynesian Jupiter. Yet
in island district after district, we find the name of the
mighty heavenly creator given to other and lesser mythic
beings. In Tahiti, the manes-worshipper's idea is applied '
not only to lesser deities, but to Taaroa the Creator himself,
whom some maintained to be but a man deified after death.
In the New Zealand mythology, Tangaroa figures on the
one hand as Sea-god and father of fish and reptiles, on the
other as the mischievous eaves-dropping god who reveals
secrets. In Tonga, Tangaloa was god of artificers and arts,
and his priests were carpenters ; it was he who went forth
to fish, and dragged up the Tonga islands from the bottom
of the sea. Here, then, he corresponds with Maui, and
indeed Tangaroa and Maui are found blending in Polynesia
even to full identification. It is neither easy nor safe to
fix to definite origin the Protean shapes of South Sea
mythology, but on the whole the native myths are apt to
embody cosmic ideas, and as the idea of the Sun preponde-
rates in Maui, so the idea of the Heaven in Taaroa. 1 In the
Fiji Islands, whose native mythology is on the whole distinct
from that of Polynesia proper, a strange weird figure takes
the supreme place among the gods. His name is Ndengei,

1 Moerenhout, ' Voyvaux lies du Grand Oce"an,' vol. i. pp. 419, 437. Ellis,
1 Polyn. Res.' voL i. p. 321, &c. J. R. Forster, ' Voyage round the World,'
pp. 540, 567. Grey, ' Polyn. Myth.' p. 6. Taylor, ' New Zealand,' p. 118 ;
ee above, rot i. p. 322. Turner, ' Polynesia," p. 244. Mariner, ' Tonga
Is.' vol. ii. pp. 116, 121. Schirren, 'Wandersagen der Neuseelander,'
pp. [68, 89.



SUPREME DEITY. 347

the serpent is his shrine, some traditions represent him with
a serpent's head and body and the rest of him stone. He
passes a monotonous existence in his gloomy cavern, feeling
no emotion nor sensation, nor any appetite but hunger ; he
takes no interest in any one but Uto, his attendant, and
gives no sign of life beyond eating, answering his priest,
and changing his position from one side to the other. No
wonder Ndengei is less worshipped than most of the inferior
gods. The natives have even made a comic song about
him, where he talks with his attendant, Uto, who has been
to attend the feast at Rakiraki, where Ndengei has espe-
cially his temple and worship.

Ndengei. ' Have you been to the sharing of food to-day ? *

Uto. ' Yes : and turtles formed a part ; but only the under-shell

was shared to us two.'
Ndengei. ' Indeed, Uto ! This is very bad. How is it ? We made them

men, placed them on the earth, gave them food, and yet

they share to us only the under-shell. Uto, how is

this ? '

The native religion of Africa, a land pervaded by the doc-
trines of divine hierarchy and divine supremacy, affords apt
evidence for the problem before us. The capacity of the
manes-worshipper's scheme to extend in this direction may
be judged from the religious speculations of the Zulus,
where may be traced the merging of the First Man, the
Old-Old-One, Unkulunkulu, into the ideal of the Creator,
Thunderer, and Heaven-god. 2 If we examine a collection
of documents illustrating the doctrines of the West African
races lying between the Hottentots on the south and the
Berbers on the north, we may fairly judge their concep-
tions, evidently influenced as these have been by Chris-
tian intercourse, to be nevertheless based on native ideas
of the personal Heaven. 3 Whether they think of their

1 Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 217.

2 Callaway, ' Religion of Amazulu,' part i. See ante, pp. 116, 313.

3 See especially Waitz, vol. ii. p. 167, &c. ; J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.'
pp. 209, 387 ; Bosman, Mungo Park, &c. Comp. Ellis, ' Madagascar,'
vol. i. p. 390.



348 ANIMISM.

supreme deity as actively pervading and governing his
universe, or as acting through his divine subordinates, or as
retiring from his creation and leaving the lesser spirits to
work their will, he is always to their minds the celestial
ruler, the Heaven-god. Examples may be cited, each in its
way full of instruction. In the mind of the Gold-coast
negro, tendencies towards theistic religion seem to have been
mainly developed through the idea of Nyongmo, the personal
Heaven, or its animating personal deity. Heaven, wide-
arching, rain-giving, light-giving, who has been and is and
shall be, is to him the Supreme Deity. The sky is Ny-
ongmo's creature, the clouds are his veil, the stars his face-
ornaments. Creator of all things, and of their animating
powers whose chief and elder he is, he sits in majestic rest
surrounded by his children, the wongs, the spirits of the
air who serve him and represent him on earth. Though
men's worship is for the most part paid to these, reverence
is also given to Nyongmo, the Eldest, the Highest. Every
day, said a fetish-man, we sec how the ftfass and corn and
trees spring forth by the rain and sunshine that Nyongmo
sends, how should he not be the Creator ? Again, the
mighty Heaven-god, far removed from man and seldom
roused to interfere in earthly interests, is the type on which
the Guinea negroes may have modelled their thoughts of a
Highest Deity who has abandoned the control of his world
to lesser and evil spirits. 1 The religion of another district
seems to show clearly the train of thought by which such
ideas may be worked out. Among the Kimbunda race of
Congo, Suku-Vakange is the highest being. He takes little
interest in mankind, leaving the real government of the
world to the good and evil kilulu or spirits, into whose ranks
the souls of men pass at death. Now in that there are more
bad spirits who torment, than good who favour living men,
human misery would be unbearable, were it not that from

1 Steinhauser, 'Religion des Negers,' in 'Mag. der Miss.' Basel, 1856.
No. 2, p. 128. J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr. 'pp. 92, 209 ; Romcr, ' Guinea,' p. 42.
See also Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 171, 419.



SUPREME DEITY. 349

time to time Suku-Vakange, enraged at the wickedness of
the evil spirits, terrifies them with thunder, and punishes
the more obstinate with his thunderbolts. Then he returns
to rest, and lets the kilulu rule again. 1 Who, we may ask,
is this divinity, calm and indifferent save when his wrath
bursts forth in storm, but the Heaven himself ? The rela-
tion of the Supreme Deity to the lesser gods of polytheism is
graphically put in the following passage, where an American
missionary among the Yorubas describes the relation of
Olorung, the Lord of Heaven, to his lesser deities (orisa),
among whom the chief are the androgynous Obatala, repre-
senting the reproductive power of nature, and Shango the
Thunder-god. 'The doctrine of idolatry prevalent in
Yoruba appears to be derived by analogy from the form and
customs of the civil government. There is but one king in
the nation, and one God over the universe. Petitioners to
the king approach him through the intervention of his
servants, courtiers, and nobles : and the petitioner con-
ciliates the courtier whom he employs by good words and
presents. In like manner no man can directly approach
God ; but the Almighty himself, they say, has appointed
various kinds of orisas, who are mediators and intercessors
between himself and mankind. No sacrifices are made to
God, because he needs nothing ; but the orisas, being much
like men, are pleased with offerings of sheep, pigeons, and
other things. They conciliate the orisa or mediator that he
may bless them, not in his own power, but in the power
of God.' 8

Rooted as they are in the depths of nature-worship, the
doctrines of the supreme Sun and Heaven both come to the
surface again in the native religions of Asia. The divine
Sun holds his primacy distinctly enough among the rude
indigenous tribes of India. Although one sect of the
Khonds of Orissa especially direct their worship to Tari

1 Magyar, ' Reisen in Siid-Afrika,' pp. 125, 335.

* Bowen, ' Gr. and Die. of Yoruba,' p. xvi. in ' Smithsonian Contr.'
vol. i.



350 ANIMISM.

Pennu the Earth-goddess, yet even they agree theoretically
with the sect who worship Bura Pennu or Bella Pennu,
Light-god or Sun-god, in giving to him supremacy above
the manes-gods and nature-gods, and all spiritual powers. 1
Among the Kol tribes of Bengal, the acknowledged primate
of all classes of divinities is the beneficient supreme deity,
Sing-bonga, Sun-god. Among some Munda tribes his
authority is so real that they will appeal to him for help
where recourse to minor deities has failed ; while among the
Santals his cultus has so dwindled away that he receives less
practical worship than his malevolent inferiors, and is scarce
honoured with more than nominal dignity and an occasional
feast. 2 These are rude tribes who, so far as we know, have
never been other than rude tribes. The Japanese are a
comparatively civilized nation, one of those so instructive to
the student of culture from the stubborn conservatism with
which they have consecrated by traditional reverence, and
kept up by state authority, the religion of their former
barbarism. This is the Kami-religion, Spirit-religion, the
ancient but mixed faith of divine spirits of ancestors, nature-
spirits, and polytheistic gods, which still holds official place
by the side of the imported Buddhism and Confucianism.
The Sun-goddess, Amaterasu, ' Heaven-shiner/ though but
sprung from the left eye of the parent Izanagi, came to be
honoured above all lesser kamis or gods, while by a fiction
of ancestor-worship the solar race, as in Peru, became the
royal family, her spirit descending to animate the Mikado.
Kaempfer, in his ' History of Japan,' written early in the
i8th century, showed how absolutely the divine Tensio Dai
Sin, represented below on the imperial throne, was looked
upon as ruler of the minor powers; he mentions the Japanese
tenth month, called the ' godless month,' because then the
lesser gods are considered to be away from their temples, gone
to pay their annual homage to the Dairi. He describes, as it

1 Macpherson, ' India,' p. 84, &c.

z Dalton, ' Kols,' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 32. Hunter, ' Rural
Bengal,' p. 184.



SUPREME DEITY. 351

was in his time, the great Japanese place of pilgrimage, Yse.
There was to be seen the small cavern in a hill near the sea,
where the divine Sun once hid herself, depriving the world
of light, and thus showing herself to be supreme above
all gods. Within the small ancient temple hard by, of
which an account and a picture are given from a Japanese
book, there were to be seen round the walls the usual
pieces of cut white paper, and in the midst nothing but a
polished metal mirror. 1

Over the vast range of the Tatar races, it is the type of
the supreme Heaven that comes prominently into view.
Nature-w.orshippers in the extreme sense, these rude tribes
conceived their ghosts and elves and demons and great
powers of the earth and air to be, like men themselves,
within the domain of the divine Heaven, almighty and all-
encompassing. To trace the Samoyed's thought of Num
the personal Sky passing into vague conceptions of pervad-
ing deity ; to see with the Tunguz how Boa the Heaven-
god, unseen but all-knowing, kindly but indifferent, has
divided the business of his world among such lesser powers
as sun and moon, earth and fire ; to discern the meaning of
the Mongrel Tengri, shading from Heaven into Heaven-god,
and thence into god or spirit in general ; to follow the
records of Heaven-worship among the ancient Turks and
Hiong-nu ; to compare the supremacy among the Lapps of
Tiermes, the Thunderer, with the supremacy among the
Finns of Jumala and Ukko, the Heaven-god and heavenly
Grandfather such evidence seems good ground for Castren's
argument, that the doctrine of the divine Sky underlay the
first Turanian conceptions, not merely of a Heaven-god, but
of a highest deity who in after ages of Christian conversion
blended into the Christian God. 2 Here, again, we may have

1 Siebold, ' Nippon.' Kaempfer, ' Hist, of Japan,' 1727, book I. ch. I, IV.
For accurate modern information, see papers of Chamberlain and Satow in
' Tr. As. Soc. Japan,' and Murray's Handbook (note to 3rd ed.).

2 Castren, ' Finn. Myth." p. i, &c. Klemm, ' Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 101.
' Samoiedia,' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 531. ' G corgi, Reise im Russ. Reich.'
vol. i. p. 275.



352



ANIMISM.



the advantage of studying among a cultured race the survi-
val of religion from ruder ancient times, kept up by official
ordinance. The state religion of China is in its dominant
doctrine the worship of Tien, Heaven, identified with Shang-
ti, the Emperor-above, next to whom stands Tu, Earth ;
while below them are worshipped great nature-spirits and
ancestors. It is possible that this faith, as Professor Max
Miiller argues, may be ethnologically and even linguistically
part and parcel of the general Heaven-worship of the
Turanian tribes of Siberia. At any rate, it is identical with
it in its primary idea, the adoration of the supreme Heaven.
Dr. Legge charges Confucius with an inclination to sub-
stitute in his religious teaching the name of Tien, Heaven,
for that known to more ancient religion and used in more
ancient books, Shang-ti, the personal ruling Deity. But it
seems rather that the sage was in fact upholding the tradi-
tions of the ancient faith, thus acting according to the
character on which he prided himself, that of a transmitter
and not a maker, a preserver of old knowledge, not a new
revealer. It is in accordance with the usual course of
theologic development, for the divine Heaven to reign in
rude mythologic religion over the lesser spirits of the world
before the childlike poetic thought passes into the states-
man's conception of a Celestial Emperor. As Plath well
remarks, ' It belongs to the Chinese system that all nature
is animated by spirits, and that all these follow one order.
As* the Chinese cannot think of a Chinese Empire with an
Emperor only, and without the host of vassal-princes and
officials, so he cannot think of the Upper Emperor without
the host of spirits.' Developed in a different line, the idea
of a supreme Heaven comes to pervade Chinese philosophy
and ethics as a general expression of fate, ordinance, duty.
' Heaven's order is nature ' ' The wise man readily awaits
Heaven's command ' ' Man must first do his own part ;
when he has done all, then he can wait for Heaven to
complete it '- -' All state officers are Heaven's workmen,
and represent him ' 'How does Heaven speak ? The four



SUPREME DEITY. 353

seasons have their course, the hundred things arise, what
speaks he ? ' ' No, Heaven speaks not ; by the course of
events he makes himself understood, no more.' 1

These stray scraps from old Chinese literature are intel-
ligible to European ears, for our Aryan race has indeed
worked out religious ideas from the like source and almost
in the like directions. The Samoyed or Tunguz Heaven-
god had his analogue in Dyu, Heaven, of the Vedic hymns.
Once meaning the sky, and the sky personified, this Zeus
came to mean far more than mere heaven in the minds of
Greek poets and philosophers, when it rose toward 'that
conception which in sublimity, brightness, and infinity
transcended all others as much as the bright blue sky
transcended all other things visible upon earth.' At the
lower level of mythic religion, the ideal process of shaping
the divine world into a monarchic constitution was worked
out by the ancient Greeks, on the same simple plan as among
such barbarians as the Kols of Chota-Nagpur or the Gallas
of Abyssinia ; Zeus is King over Olympian gods, and below
these again are marshalled the crowded ranks of demigods,
heroes, demons, nymphs, ghosts. At the higher level of
theologic speculation, exalted thoughts of universal cause
and being, of physical and moral law, took personality under
the name of Zeus. It is in direct derivation along this
historic line, that the classical heaven-cultus still asserts
itself in song and pageant among us, in that quaintest of
quaint survivals, the factitious religion of the Italian Opera,
where such worship as artistic ends require is still addressed
to the divine Cielo. Even in our daily talk, colloquial ex-
pressions call up before the mind of the ethnographer out-
lines of remotest religious history. Heaven grants, forbids,
blesses still in phrase, as heretofore in fact.

Vast and difficult as is the research into the full scope
and history of the doctrine of supremacy among the higher

1 Plath, ' Rel. der Alten Chinesen,' part i. p. 18, &c. See Max Mailer,
4 Lectures on Science of Religion,' No. III. in ' Eraser's Mag.' 1870. Legge,
' Confucius,' p. ico.



354 ANIMISM.

nations, it may be at least seen that helpful clues exist to
lead the explorer. The doctrine of mighty nature-spirits,
inhabiting and controlling sky and earth and sea, seems to
expand in Asia into such ideas as that of Mahatman the
Great Spirit, Paramatman the Highest Spirit, taking per-
sonality as Brahma the all-pervading universal soul 1 in
Europe into philosophic conceptions of which a grand type
stands out in Kepler's words, that the universe is a harmo-
nious whole, whose soul is God. There is a saying of
Comte's that throws strong light upon this track of specula-
tive theology : he declares that the conception among the
ancients of the Soul of the Universe, the notion that the
earth is a vast living animal, and in our own time, the
obscure pantheism which is so rife among German meta-
physicians, are only fetishism generalized and made syste-
matic. 2 Polytheism, in its inextricable confusion of the
persons and functions of the great divinities, and in its
assignment of the sovereignty of the world to a supreme
being who combines in himself the attributes of several such
minor deities, tends toward the doctrine of fundamental
unity. Max Miiller, in a lecture on the Veda, has given
the name of kathenotheism to the doctrine of divine unity
in diversity which comes into view in these instructive
lines :

' Indram Mitram Varunam Agnim ahur atho

divyah sa suparno Garutman :
Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti Agnim
Yamam Mataricvanam ahuh.'

'They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the beautiful-
winged heavenly Garutmat : That which is One the wise call it in divers
manners ; they call it Agni, Yama, Matari?van.' 3

1 See Colebrooke, ' Essays,' vol. ii. VVuttke, ' Heidenthum,' part i. p. 254.
Ward, ' Hindoos,' vol. i. p. xxi. vol. ii. p. I.

2 Comte, ' Philosophic Positive.' Cf. Bp. Berkeley's ' Siris ' ; and for a
modern dissertation on the universal aether as the divine soul of the world,
see Phil. Spillcr, ' Gott im Lichte der Naturwissenschaften,' Berlin, 1873
(note to 2nd ed.).

3 ' Rig- Veda,' i. 164, 46. Max Miiller, ' Chips,' vol. i. pp. 27, 241.



SUPREME DEITY. 355

The figure of the supreme deity, be he Heaven-god, Sun-
god, Great Spirit, beginning already in uncultured thought
to take the form and function of a divine ruler of the
world, represents a conception which it becomes the age-long
work of systematic theology to develop and to define.
Thus in Greece arises Zeus the highest, greatest, best, ' who
was and is and shall be,' ' beginning and chief of all things/
' who rules over all mortals and immortals,' ' Zeus the god
of gods.' 1 Such is Ahura Mazda in the Persian faith,
among whose seventy-two names of might are these : Crea-
tor, Protector, Nourisher, Holiest Heavenly One, Healing
Priest, Most Pure, Most Majestic, Most Knowing, Most
Ruling at Will. 2 There may be truth in the assertion that
the esoteric religion of ancient Egypt centred in a doctrine
of divine unity, manifested through the heterogeneous crowd
of popular deities. 3 It may be a hopeless task to disentangle
the confused personalities of Baal, Bel, and Moloch, and no
antiquary may ever fully solve the enigma how far the divine
name of El carried in its wide range among the Jewish and
other Semitic nations a doctrine of divine supremacy. 4 The
great Syro-Phcenician kingdoms and religions have long
since passed away into darkness, leaving but antiquarian
relics to vouch for their former might. Far other has been the
history of their Jewish kindred, still standing fast to their
ancient nationality, still upholding to this day their patri-
archal religion, in the midst of nations who inherit from
the faith of Israel the belief in one God, highest, almighty,
who in the beginning made the heavens and the earth, whose
throne is established of old, who is from everlasting to
everlasting.

Before now bringing these researches to a close, it will be
well to state compactly the reasons for treating the animism
of the modern savage world as more or less representing the

1 See Welcker, ' Griech. Gotterlehre,' pp. 143, 175.
8 Avesta ; trans, by Spiegel, ' Ormazd-Yasht.' 12.
3 Wilkinson, ' Ancient Eg.' vol. iv. ch. xii. ; Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv.

P- 325-

* Movers, ' Phonizier,' vol. i. p. 169, &c.



356 ANIMISM.

animism of remotely ancient races of mankind. Savage
animism, founded on a doctrine of souls carried to an extent
far beyond its limits in the cultivated world, and thence
expanding to a yet wider doctrine of spiritual beings ani-
mating and controlling the universe in all its parts, becomes
a theory of personal causes developed into a general philo-
sophy of man and nature. As such, it may be reasonably
accounted for as the direct product of natural religion,
using this term according to the sense of its definition by
Bishop Wilkins : ' I call that Natural Religion, wfrich men
might know, and should be obliged unto, by the meer prin-
ciples of Reason, improved by Consideration and Experience ,
without the help of Revelation.' 1 It will scarcely be argued
by theologians familiar with the religions of savage tribes,
that they are direct or nearly direct products of revelation,
for the theology of our time would abolish or modify their
details till scarce one was left intact. The main issue of
the problem is this, whether savage animism is a primary
formation belonging to the lower culture, or whether it con-
sists, mostly or entirely, of beliefs originating in some
higher culture, and conveyed by adoption or degradation
into the lower. The evidence for the first alternative,
though not amounting to complete demonstration, seems
reasonably strong, and not met by contrary evidence ap-
proaching it in force. The animism of the lower tribes,
self-contained and self-supporting, maintained in close con-
tact with that direct evidence of the senses on which it
appears to be originally based, is a system which might
quite reasonably exist among mankind, had they never any-



1 ' Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion,' London, 1678, book
i. ch. vi. Johnson's Dictionary, 8.v. The term ' natural religion ' is used in
various and even incompatible senses. Thus Butler in his ' Analogy of
Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,'
signifies by ' natural religion ' a primaeval system which he expressly argues
to have been not reasoned out, but taught first by revelation. This system,
of which the main tenets are the belief in one God, the Creator and Moral
Governor of the World, and in a future state of moral retribution, differs
in the extreme from the actual religions of the lower races.



PHILOSOPHY OF UNIVERSE. 357

where risen above the savage condition. Now it does not
seem that the animism of the higher nations stands in a
connexion so direct and complete with their mental state.
It is by no means so closely limited to doctrines evidenced
by simple contemplation of nature. The doctrines of the
lower animism appear in the higher often more and more
modified, to bring them into accordance with an advancing
intellectual condition, to adapt them at once to the limits of
stricter science and the needs of higher faith ; and in the
higher animism these doctrines are retained side by side
with other and special beliefs, of which the religions of the
lower world show scarce a germ. In tracing the course of
animistic thought from stage to stage of history, instruction
is to be gained alike from the immensity of change and
from the intensity of permanence. Savage animism, both
by what it has and by what it wants, seems to represent the
earlier system in which began the age-long course of the
education of the world. Especially is it to be noticed that
various beliefs and practices, which in the lower animism
stand firm upon their grounds as if they grew there, in the
higher animism belong rather to peasants than philosophers,
exist rather as ancestral relics than as products belonging
to their age, are falling from full life into survival. Thus
it is that savage religion can frequently explain doctrines
and rites of civilized religion. The converse is far less often
the case. Now this is a state of things which appears to
carry a historical as well as a practical meaning. The
degradation-theory would expect savages to hold beliefs and
customs intelligible as broken-down relics of former higher
civilization. The develo pment-theory would expect civilized
men to keep up beliefs and customs which have their reason-
able meaning in less cultured states of society. So far as
the study of survival enables us to judge between the two
theories, it is seen that what is intelligible religion in the
lower culture is often meaningless superstition in the higher,
and thus the development-theory has the upper hand.
Moreover, this evidence fits with the teaching of prehistoric



358 ANIMISM.

archaeology. Savage life, carrying on into our own day the
life of the Stone Age, may be legitimately claimed as repre-
senting remotely ancient conditions of mankind, intellectual
and moral as well as material. If so, a low but progressive
state of animistic religion occupies a like ground in savage
and in primitive culture.

Lastly, a few words of explanation may be offered as to
the topics which this survey has included and excluded. To
those who have been accustomed to find theological subjects
dealt with on a dogmatic, emotional, and ethical, rather
than an ethnographic scheme, the present investigation
may seem misleading, because one-sided. This one-sided
treatment, however, has been adopted with full considera-
tion. Thus, though the doctrines here examined bear not
only on the development but the actual truth of religious
systems, I have felt neither able nor willing to enter into
this great argument fully and satisfactorily, while experience
has shown that to dispose of such questions by an occasional
dictatorial phrase is one of the most serious of errors. The
scientific value of descriptions of savage and barbarous
religions, drawn up by travellers and especially by mission-
aries, is often lowered by their controversial tone, and by
the affectation of infallibility with which their relation to
the absolutely true is settled. There is something pathetic
in the simplicity with which a narrow student will judge the
doctrines of a foreign religion by their antagonism or con-
formity to his own orthodoxy, on points where utter differ-
ence of opinion exists among the most learned and enlight-
ened scholars. The systematization of the lower religions,
the reduction of their multifarious details to the few and
simple ideas of primitive philosophy which form the com-
mon groundwork of them all, appeared to me an urgently
needed contribution to the science of religion. This work
I have carried out to the utmost of my power, and I can now
only leave the result in the hands of other students, whose
province it is to deal with such evidence in wider schemes
of argument. Again, the intellectual rather than the emo-



PHILOSOPHY OF UNIVERSE. 359

tional side of religion has here been kept in view. Even in
the life of the rudest savage, religious belief is associated
with intense emotion, with awful reverence, with agonizing
terror, with rapt ecstasy when sense and thought utterly
transcend the common level of daily life. How much the
more in faiths where not only does the believer experience
such enthusiasm, but where his utmost feelings of love and
hope, of justice and mercy, of fortitude and tenderness and
self-sacrificing devotion, of unutterable misery and dazzling
happiness, twine and clasp round the fabric of religion.
Language, dropping at times from such words as soul and
spirit their mere philosophic meaning, can use them in full
conformity with this tendency of the religious mind, as
phrases to convey a mystic sense of transcendent emotion.
Yet of all this religion, the religion of vision and of passion,
little indeed has been said in these pages, and even that
little rather in incidental touches than with purpose. Those
to whom religion means above all things religious feeling,
may say of my argument that I have written soullessly of
the soul, and unspiritually of spiritual things. Be it so : I
accept the phrase not as needing an apology, but as ex-
pressing a plan. Scientific progress is at times most
furthered by working along a distinct intellectual line>
without being tempted to diverge from the main object to
what lies beyond, in however intimate connexion. The
anatomist does well to discuss bodily structure independ-
ently of the world of happiness and misery which depends
upon it. It would be thought a mere impertinence for a
strategist to preface a dissertation on the science of war,
by an enquiry how far it is lawful for a Christian man to
bear weapons and serve in the wars. My task has been
here not to discuss Religion in all its bearings, but to
portray in outline the great doctrine of Animism, as found
in what I conceive to be its earliest stages among the lower
races of mankind, and to show its transmission along the
lines of religious thought.

The almost entire exclusion of ethical questions from



360 ANIMISM.

this investigation has more than a mere reason of arrange-
ment. It is due to the very nature of the subject. To
some the statement may seem startling, yet the evidence
seems to justify it, that the relation of morality to religion
is one that only belongs in its rudiments, or not at all, to
rudimentary civilization. The comparison of savage and
civilized religions bring into view, by the side of a deep-
lying resemblance in their philosophy, a deep-lying contrast
in their practical action on human life. So far as savage
religion can stand as representing natural religion, the
popular idea that the moral government of the universe is
an essential tenet of natural religion simply falls to the
ground. Savage animism is almost devoid of that ethical
element which to the educated modern mind is the very
mainspring of practical religion. Not, as I have said, that
morality is absent from the life of the lower races. Without
a code of morals, the very existence of the rudest tribe
would be impossible ; and indeed the moral standards of
even savage races are to no small extent well-defined and
praiseworthy. But these ethical laws stand on their own
ground of tradition and public opinion, comparatively in-
dependent of the animistic belief and rites which exist
beside them. The lower animism is not immoral, it is
unmoral. For this plain reason, it has seemed desirable to
keep the discussion of animism, as far as might be, separate
from that of ethics. The general problem of the relation of
morality to religion is difficult, intricate, and requiring im-
mense array of evidence, and may be perhaps more profit-
ably discussed in connexion with the ethnography of morals.
To justify their present separation, it will be enough to
refer in general terms to the accounts of savage tribes
whose ideas have been little affected by civilized inter-
course ; proper caution being used not to trust vague state-
ments about good and evil, but to ascertain whether these
are what philosophic moralists would call virtue and vice,
righteousness and wickedness, or whether they are mere
personal advantage and disadvantage. The essential con-



MORAL INSTITUTION. 361

nexion of theology and morality is a fixed idea in many
minds. But it is one of the lessons of history that subjects
may maintain themselves independently for ages, till the
event of coalescence takes place. In the course of history,
religion has in various ways attached to itself matters small
and great outside its central scheme, such as prohibition of
special meats, observance of special days, regulation of mar-
riage as to kinship, division of society into castes, ordinance
of social law and civil government. Looking at religion
from a political point of view, as a practical influence on
human society, it is clear that among its greatest powers
have been its divine sanction of ethical laws, its theological
enforcement of morality, its teaching of moral government
of the universe, its supplanting the ' continuance-doctrine '
of a future life by the ' retribution-doctrine ' supplying
moral motive in the present. But such alliance belongs
almost or wholly to religions above the savage level, not to
the earlier and lower creeds. It will aid us to see how
much more the fruit of religion belongs to ethical influence
than to philosophical dogma, if we consider how the intro-
duction of the moral element separates the religions of the
world, united as they are throughout by one animistic
principle, into two great classes, those lower systems whose
best result is to supply a crude childlike natural philosophy,
and those higher faiths which implant on this the law of
righteousness and of holiness, the inspiration of duty and
of love.



II. 2 A