A very old woman was most reluctant to speak of Unkulunkulu; at last she said, ’Ah, it is he in fact who is the Creator, who is in heaven, of whom the ancients spoke.’  Then the old woman began to babble humorously of how the white men made all things.  Again, Unkulunkulu is said to have been created by Utilexo.  Utilexo was invisible, Unkulunkulu was visible, and so got credit not really his due.[42] When the heaven is said to be the Chief’s (the chief being a living Zulu) ’they do not believe what they say,’ the phrase is a mere hyperbolical compliment.[43]

On this examination of the evidence, it certainly seems as logical to conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as lower races entertain, and then nearly lost it; as to say that Zulus, though a monarchical race, have not yet developed a King-God out of the throng of spirits (Amatongo).  The Zulus, the Norsemen of the South, so to speak, are a highly practical military race.  A Deity at all abstract was not to their liking.  Serviceable family spirits, who continually provided an excuse for a dinner of roast beef, were to their liking.  The less developed races do not kill their flocks commonly for food.  A sacrifice is needed as a pretext.  To the gods of Andamanese, Bushmen, Australians, no sacrifice is offered.  To the Supreme Being of most African peoples no sacrifice is offered.  There is no festivity in the worship of these Supreme Beings, no feasting, at all events.  They are not to be ‘got at’ by gifts or sacrifices.  The Amatongo are to be ‘got at,’ are bribable, supply an excuse for a good dinner, and thus the practical Amatongo are honoured, while, in the present generation of Zulus, Unkulunkulu is a joke, and the Lord in Heaven is the shadow of a name.  Clearly this does not point to the recent but to the remote development of the higher ideas, now superseded by spirit-worship.

We shall next see how this view, the opposite of the anthropological theory, works when applied to other races, especially to other African races.

[Footnote 1:  When I wrote Myth, Ritual, and Religion (ii. 11-13) I regarded Cagn as ‘only a successful and idealised medicine man.’  But I now think that I confused in my mind the religious and the mythological aspects of Cagn.  One of unknown origin, existing before the sun, a Maker of all things, prayed to, but not in receipt of sacrifice, is no medicine man, except in his myth.]

[Footnote 2:  The omissions in Mr. Spencer’s system may possibly be explained by the circumstance that, as he tells us, he collected his facts ‘by proxy.’  While we find Waitz much interested in and amazed by the benevolent Supreme Being of many African tribes, that personage is only alluded to as ‘Alleged Benevolent Supreme Being’ in Mr. Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology, and is usually left out of sight altogether in his Principles of Sociology and Ecclesiastical Institutions.  Yet we have precisely the same