But it would be unjust even to such primitive faiths as these to sup pose that gratitude was absent or that the kinder gods were altogether overlooked. There arc everywhere men " who dare to strive with gods," and who revolt from a base subjection to malicious beings. Von Pertz tells of a tribe of Caffirs who refused any further attempts to pacify their persecuting gods because pestilence and hunger did not cease among them. The Andaman islanders defy the god of the storm, and shoot their arrows into the air that they may pierce him. On the other hand, even Australians, counted by some among the lowest of the race, have their kindly divin ities, as Koyan, who hunts up lost children and restores them to their mother, and guards the camps at night; and Motogon, who causes the water streams to flow through their arid lands. Their Kobong is the patron of the clan, and is regarded as an ever-present protector and adviser. Indeed, both with them, and very widely in America, the belief in a beneficent protective deity for the clan and in a personal or guardian spirit for each individual, working constantly for his welfare, is a refutation of the state ment sometimes made that such religions are those of fear only. The arts in vogue among these people, their knowledge of medicines, and the introduction of what food-plants they possess are attributed to these kindly guardians.
SiVlest Elements qf Relic/ea.—Reducing religion to its lowest terms, we find that it consists in a belief that the order of nature is controlled by mind; and this is likewise indispensable to its most exalted expression. The difference between the two consists in removing the action of mind farther and farther from the immediate event.
We are so accustomed to associate other ideas with religion—as, for instance, those of the continuance of personal life after bodily death, or the conception of a Creator or Godthat we are apt to reject that as a religion where neither of these is perceptible. Yet various examples prove that they are not necessary in even highly developed religions. The Hebrew faith does not require the belief in the life after death, and one of its important branches, the Sadducees, distinctly disavowed the existence of either "angel or spirit." The ancient Italian religion was apparently equally materialistic. Buddhism, now the most widely accepted of all doctrines, in its original form denied the existence both of God and an immortal soul. When Hardy asked a Ceylon Buddhist to whom he prayed, he answered, " Only to myself." Where a god is recognized, it is rarely under an immaterial form, and it may be an inanimate object or a living person. The monarchs of ancient Egypt were not merely rulers by divine right, but were esteemed divine themselves. The king was not merely a god, but the god. In the
autobiography of Saneha, a servant of Ameneinha I., he addresses his royal master in these words : " I live by the breath which thou givest ; I love Ra Horos fondly, the image of thy noble shape ; the power of thy arm extends over all lands " (Tiele). No other nation has equalled the Egyptians in their worship of the lower animals, dogs, cows, monkeys, and crocodiles. But it would be a serious error on account of these, to us, repulsive and debasing ideals of divinity to conclude that their wor ship was either lowering or unprogressive. On the contrary, Dr. Tiele writes : "The Egyptian religion was the first civilized expression of faith in the unlimited sovereignty of the Deity." Doctrine of will readily be seen how the belief that every event is the immediate expression of intelligence led to the corol lary that all objects possess an intelligence, soul, or spirit. This has been called by Dr. Tylor the doctrine of souls, or animism; and by this word he explains the character of primitive religions. Animism is, how ever, just as much the doctrine of many of the highest faiths as of those of savages ; only the former remove the soul of the universe more remotely from the event, and suppose that it acts through laws and secondary causes. Primitive beliefs—those of men who had acquired no knowledge of the natural forces—construed all their manifestations as intelligential. Did a stone roll down a hillside, it was the spirit of the stone which impelled its leaps along the ground; the bubbling of the fountain was the sporting of the water-spirits ; the wind in the treetops was the mur muring of the dryads. So far from being godless, the lowest races are those which are oppressed by the multitude of their divinities. The Eskimos—whom Sir John Lubbock and others adduce as a people quite devoid of religion—by the testimony of Cranz, Egede, and Rink, people the air, the water, and the earth with countless imaginary beings of super natural powers, some friendly, some hostile, to man.
Doctrine of this will be seen the origin of filichism, a term derived from a Portuguese word, feitico, applied to the material objects, animate or inanimate, worshipped by the natives of Western Africa. These objects are not revered for themselves, but for the influence they are supposed to exert through the unseen intelligences connected with them. Fetiches are generally articles of unusual shape or appearance. In Australia and Central America the rock-crystal is a favorite fetich, its symmetry and transparency marking it as something extraordinary. Bones have always been favorite objects of this character (see above, p. 131), and in some African tribes a house-owner will secure protection for his possessions by suspending a clavicle over his door.