more remains to be done in this field.  But the area covered is wide, the evidence is the best attainable, and it seems proved beyond doubt that savages have ‘felt after’ a conception of a Creator much higher than that for which they commonly get credit.  Now, if that conception is original, or is very early (and nothing in it suggests lateness of development), then the other elements of their faith and practice are degenerate.

‘How,’ it has been asked, ’could all mankind forget a pure religion?’[5] That is what I now try to explain.  That degeneration I would account for by the attractions which animism, when once developed, possessed for the naughty natural man, ‘the old Adam.’  A moral creator in need of no gifts, and opposed to lust and mischief, will not help a man with love-spells, or with malevolent ‘sendings’ of disease by witchcraft; will not favour one man above his neighbour, or one tribe above its rivals, as a reward for sacrifice which he does not accept, or as constrained by charms which do not touch his omnipotence.  Ghosts and ghost-gods, on the other hand, in need of food and blood, afraid of spells and binding charms,[6] are a corrupt, but, to man, a useful constituency.  Man being what he is, man was certain to ‘go a-whoring’ after practically useful ghosts, ghost-gods, and fetishes which he could keep in his wallet or medicine bag.  For these he was sure, in the long run, first to neglect his idea of his Creator; next, perhaps, to reckon Him as only one, if the highest, of the venal rabble of spirits or deities, and to sacrifice to Him, as to them.  And this is exactly what happened!  If we are not to call it ‘degeneration,’ what are we to call it?  It may be an old theory, but facts ‘winna ding,’ and are on the side of an old theory.  Meanwhile, on the material plane, culture kept advancing, the crafts and arts arose; departments arose, each needing a god; thought grew clearer; such admirable ethics as those of the Aztecs were developed, and while bleeding human hearts smoked on every altar, Nezahuatl conceived and erected a bloodless fane to ’The Unknown God, Cause of Causes,’ without altar or idol; and the Inca, Yupanqui, or another, declared that ’Our Father and Master, the Sun, must have a Lord.’[7]

But, at this stage of culture, the luck of the state, and the interests of a rich and powerful clergy, were involved in the maintenance of the old, animistic, relatively non-moral system, as in Cuzco, Greece, and Rome.  That popular and political regard for the luck of the state, that priestly self-interest (quite natural), could only be swept away by the moral monotheism of Christianity or of Islam.  Nothing else could do it.  In the case of Christianity, the central and most potent of many combined influences, apart from the Life and Death of Our Lord, was the moral Monotheism of the Hebrew religion of Jehovah.

Now, it is undeniable that Jehovah, at a certain period of Hebrew history, had become degraded and anthropomorphized, far below Darumulun, and Puluga, and Pachacamac, and Ahone, as conceived of in their purest form, and in the high mood of savage mysteries which yet contain so much that is grotesque.  Even the Big Black Man of the Fuegians is on a higher level (as we reckon morals), when he forbids the slaying of a robber enemy, than certain examples of early Hebrew conduct.  But our knowledge of the Fuegians is lamentably scanty.