We may admit that Mr. Tylor’s account of the process by which Gods were evolved out of ghosts is a little touffu—­rather buried in facts.  We ‘can scarcely see the wood for the trees.’  We want to know how Gods, makers of things (or of most things), fathers in heaven, and friends, guardians of morality, seeing what is good or bad in the hearts of men, were evolved, as is supposed, out of ghosts or surviving souls of the dead.  That such moral, practically omniscient Gods are known to the very lowest savages—­Bushmen, Fuegians, Australians—­we shall demonstrate.

Here the inquirer must be careful not to adopt the common opinion that Gods improve, morally and otherwise, in direct ratio to the rising grades in the evolution of culture and civilisation.  That is not necessarily the case; usually the reverse occurs.  Still less must we take it for granted, following Mr. Tylor and Mr. Huxley, that the ’alliance [of religion and morality] belongs almost, or wholly, to religions above the savage level—­not to the earlier and lower creeds;’ or that ’among the Australian savages,’ and ‘in its simplest condition,’ ’theology is wholly independent of ethics.’[4] These statements can be proved (by such evidence as anthropology is obliged to rely upon) to be erroneous.  And, just because these statements are put forward, Anthropology has an easier task in explaining the origin of religion; while, just because these statements are incorrect, her conclusion, being deduced from premises so far false, is invalidated.

Given souls, acquired by thinking on the lines already described, Mr. Tylor develops Gods out of them.  But he is not one of the writers who is certain about every detail.  He ’scarcely attempts to clear away the haze that covers great parts of the subject.’[5]

The human soul, he says, has been the model on which man ’framed his ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports in the grass up to the heavenly creator and ruler of the world, the Great Spirit.’  Here it is taken for granted that the Heavenly Ruler was from the first envisaged as a ’spiritual being’—­which is just the difficulty.  Was He?[6]

The process of framing these ideas is rather obscure.  The savage ’lives in terror of the souls of the dead as harmful spirits.’  This might yield a Devil; it would not yield a God who ‘makes for righteousness.’  Happily, ’deified ancestors are regarded, on the whole, as kindly spirits.’  The dead ancestor is ’now passed into a deity.’[7] Examples of ancestor-worship follow.  But we are no nearer home.  For among the Zulus many Amatongo (ancestral spirits) are sacred.  ’Yet their father [i.e. the father of each actual family] is far before all others when they worship the Amatongo....  They do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names.’[8] Thus, each new generation of Zulus must have a new first worshipful object—­its own father’s