(2) Mariner, ii. 127.
(3) White, Ancient History of the Maoris, vol. i. p. 4; other views in Gill's Myths of the Pacific. I am not committed to Mr. White's opinion.
(4) Journal Anthrop. Inst., Nov., 1894, p. 191.
(5) Ibid., 1886, p. 313.
(6) See Making of Religion, pp. 201-210, for a more copious statement.
Again, these powerful, or omnipotent divine beings are looked on as guardians of morality, punishers of sin, rewarders of righteousness, both in this world and in a future life, in places where ghosts, though believed in, ARE NOT WORSHIPPED, NOR IN RECEIPT OF SACRIFICE, and where, great grandfathers being forgotten, ancestral ghosts can scarcely swell into gods. This occurs among Andamanese, Fuegians and Australians, therefore, among non-ghost-worshipping races, ghosts cannot have developed into deities who are not even necessarily spirits. These gods, again, do not receive sacrifice, and thus lack the note of descent from hungry food-craving ghosts. In Australia, indeed, while ghosts are not known to receive any offerings, "the recent custom of providing food for it"—the dead body of a friend—"is derided by the intelligent old aborigines as 'white fellow's gammon'".(1)
(1) Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 51, 1881.
The Australians possess no chiefs like "Vich Ian Vohr or Chingachgook" whose ghosts might be said to swell into supreme moral deities. "Headmen" they have, leaders of various degrees of authority, but no Vich Ian Vohr, no semi-sacred representative of the tribe.(1) Nor are the ghosts of the Headmen known to receive any particular posthumous attention or worship. Thus it really seems impossible to show proof that Australian gods grew out of Australian ghosts, a subject to which we shall return.
(1) Howitt, Organisation of Australian Tribes, pp. 101-113. "Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria," 1889.
Some supporters of the current theory therefore fall back on the hypothesis that the Australians are sadly degenerate.(1) Chiefs, it is argued, or kings, they once had, and the gods are surviving ghosts of these wholly forgotten potentates. To this we reply that we know not the very faintest trace of Australian degeneration. Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor have correctly argued that the soil of Australia has not yet yielded so much as a fragment of native pottery, nor any trace of native metal work, not a vestige of stone buildings occurs, nor of any work beyond the present native level of culture, unless we reckon weirs for fish-catching. "The Australian boomerang," writes Mr. Tylor, "has been claimed as derived from some hypothetical high culture, whereas the transition-stages through which it is connected with the club are to be observed in its own country, while no civilised race possesses the weapon."(2)