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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 circumspectly 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 to mistake 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 Warrūgūra, who dwells in the nethermost regions, who causes the great calamities which befal mankind, and whom the natives represent with horns and tail, although no horned beast is indigenous in the land. 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 Eyr vol. ii. p. 356; Lang, Queensland,' p. 444.

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) seem to have had no idea of the Devil, as the Prince of Darkness, before the Europeans came into the country. They consider him now as a very powerful spirit, but unable to do good, and therefore call him The Evil One. Thus they now believe in two Beings, the one supremely good, and the other altogether evil. To the former they ascribe all good, and to the latter all evil. About thirty years ago, a great 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 exploits on the journey, but all agreed in this, that no one could enter into heaven without great danger; for the road, say they, 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 through him to God himself, from whom they pretend to have received a commandment, to instruct the Indians in the way to heaven. By these preachers the Indians were informed that heaven was the dwelling of God, and hell that of the Devil. Some of their preachers confessed that they had not reached the dwelling of God, but had however approached near enough to hear the cocks crow, and 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, 'Indians in North America,' part i. p. 34.

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 anybody 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 conclusive 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 spiritual party desired to destroy and the other to save; the defending spirits prevailed, dug up the bewitched charm-bags which had been buried to cause sympathetic disease, and flung these objects

into the midst of the assembly of the people watching in silence, just as the spirits now fling real flowers at a tablerapping séance.1 For spirits less closely belonging to the definition of ghosts, we may take Rochefort's remark in the 17th 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 barbarians as ranged in antagonistic ranks as good and evil, i. e., friendly and hostile to themselves. The interesting inquiry on which it is here desirable to collect evidence, is this: how far are the docrines 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 personified, 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 primitive conceptions which, developed in systematic form and attached to ethical meaning, have 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 many 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.

2 Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 416. See J. G. Müller, p. 207.

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, considered 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 fundamental 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 Tuscaroras, 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

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