To gods the human sacrifice was probably extended (in some cases) either by a cannibal civilised race, like the Aztecs, or by way of piacula, the god being conciliated for man’s sin by the offering of what man most prized, the ‘jealousy’ of the god being appeased in a similar way.  But these are relatively advanced conceptions, not to be found, to my knowledge, among the lowest and most backward races.  Therefore, advance to the idea of spirit at one point, meant degeneration at another point, to the extent of human sacrifice.

Thus, on looking at relatively advanced races, we find them worshipping polytheistic deities and ghosts of the kings just dead, who are often propitiated by terrible massacres of human victims, while, as in the case of Taa-roa, the blood spurts back even on the uncreated Creator, who was before earth was, or sea, sun, or sky.

Undeniably the hungry, cruel gods are degenerate from the Australian Father in Heaven, who receives no sacrifice but that of men’s lusts and selfishness; who desires obedience, not the fat of kangaroos; who needs nothing of ours; is unfed and unbribed.  Thus, in this particular respect the degeneration of religion from the Australian or Andamanese to the Dinka standard—­and infinitely more to the Polynesian, or Aztec, or popular Greek standard—­is as undeniable as any fact in human history.

Anthropology has only escaped the knowledge of this circumstance by laying down the rule, demonstrably unbased on facts, that ’the divine sanction of ethical laws ... belongs almost or wholly to religions above the savage level, not to the earlier and lower creeds;’ that ’savage Animism is almost devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainspring of practical religion.’[4]

I have argued, indeed, that the God of low savages who imparts the divine sanction of ethical laws is not of animistic origin.  But even where Mr. Im Thurn finds, in Guiana, nothing but Animism of the lowest conceivable type, he also finds in that Animism the only or most potent moral restraint on the conduct of men.

While Anthropology holds the certainly erroneous idea that the religion of the most backward races is always non-moral, of course she cannot know that there has, in fact, been great degeneration in religion (if religion began on the Australian and Andamanese level, or even higher) wherever religion is non-moral or immoral.

Again, Anthropology, while fixing her gaze on totems, on worshipped mummies, adored ghosts, and treasured fetishes, has not, to my knowledge, made a comparative study of the higher and purer religious ideas of savages.  These have been passed by, with a word about credulous missionaries and Christian influences, except in the brief summary for which Mr. Tylor found room.  In this work I only take a handful of cases of the higher religious opinions of savages, and set them side by side for purposes of comparison.  Much