Park himself, in extreme distress, and almost in despair, chanced to observe the delicate beauty of a small moss-plant, and, reflecting that the Creator of so frail a thing could not be indifferent to any of His creatures, plucked up courage and reached safety.[20] He was not of the negro philosophy, and is the less likely to have invented it.  The new moon prayer, said in a whisper, was reported to Park, ’by many different people,’ to contain ’thanks to God for his kindness during the existence of the past moon, and to solicit a continuation of his favour during the new one.’  This, of course, may prove Islamite influence, and is at variance with the general tendency of the religious philosophy as described.

We now arrive at a theory of the Supreme Being among a certain African race which would be entirely fatal to my whole hypothesis on this topic, if it could be demonstrated correct in fact, and if it could be stretched so as to apply to the Australians, Fuegians, Andamanese, and other very backward peoples.  It is the hypothesis that the Supreme Being is a ‘loan-god,’ borrowed from Europeans.

The theory is very lucidly set forth in Major Ellis’s ’Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast.’[21] Major Ellis’s opinion coincides with that of Waitz in his ‘Introduction to Anthropology’ (an opinion to which Waitz does not seem bigoted)—­namely, that ’the original form of all religion is a raw, unsystematic polytheism,’ nature being peopled by inimical powers or spirits, and everyone worshipping what he thinks most dangerous or most serviceable.  There are few general, many local or personal, objects of veneration.[22] Major Ellis only met this passage when he had formed his own ideas by observation of the Tshi race.  We do not pretend to guess what ‘the original form of all religion’ may have been; but we have given, and shall give, abundant evidence for the existence of a loftier faith than this, among peoples much lower in material culture than the Tshi races, who have metals and an organised priesthood.  They occupy, in small villages (except Coomassie and Djuabin), the forests of the Gold Coast.  The mere mention of Coomassie shows how vastly superior in civilisation the Tshis (Ashantis and Fantis) are to the naked, houseless Australians.  Their inland communities, however, are ’mere specks in a vast tract of impenetrable forest.’  The coast people have for centuries been in touch with Europeans, but the ’Tshi-speaking races are now much in the same condition, both socially and morally, as they were at the time of the Portuguese discovery.’[23]

Nevertheless, Major Ellis explains their Supreme Being as the result of European influence! A priori this appears highly improbable.  That a belief should sweep over all these specks in impenetrable forest, from the coast-tribes in contact with Europeans, and that this belief should, though the most recent, be infinitely the least powerful, cannot be regarded as a plausible hypothesis.  Moreover, on Major