For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of the Origin of Religion, and probably never will be. Behind the races whom we must regard as "nearest the beginning" are their unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves, but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral condition we can only form conjectures. Among them religion arose, in circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only venture on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am not to say "Creator") and Judge of men. But, as to whether the higher religious belief, or the lower mythical stories came first, we are at least certain that the Christian conception of God, given pure, was presently entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the Apostles. Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief came first, fanciful legend was attached after. I am inclined to surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on the legend of Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of mythical accretions on a faith in a Heaven-God, in action. That "the feeling of religious devotion" attests "high faculties" in early man (such as are often denied to men who "cannot count up to seven"), and that "the same high mental faculties . . . would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs,"was the belief of Mr. Darwin. That is also my view, and I note that the lowest savages are not yet guilty of the very worst practices, "sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving God," and ordeals by poison and fire, to which Mr. Darwin alludes. "The improvement of our science" has freed us from misdeeds which are unknown to the Andamanese or the Australians. Thus there was, as regards these points in morals, degeneracy from savagery as society advanced, and I believe that there was also degeneration in religion. To say this is not to hint at a theory of supernatural revelation to the earliest men, a theory which I must, in limine disclaim.
Tylor, "Limits of Savage Religion." Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi.
Descent of Man, p. 68, 1871.
In vol. ii. p. 19 occurs a reference, in a note, to Mr. Hartland's criticism of my ideas about Australian gods as set forth in the Making of Religion. Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on Australian religion in this book, does not consider that my note on p. 19 meets the point of his argument. As to the Australians, Imean no more than that, AMONG endless low myths, some of them possess a belief in a "maker of everything," a primal being, still in existence, watching conduct, punishing breaches of his laws, and, in some cases, rewarding the good in a future life. Of course these are the germs of a sympathetic religion, even if the being thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or humorous contradictory myths. My position is not harmed by such myths, which occur in all old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths were attached to the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and popular tales.
Thus, if there is nothing "sacred" in a religion because wild or wicked fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing "sacred"in almost any religion on earth.
Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially "sacred" and to be distinguished from others, because they are inculcated at the religious Mysteries of some tribes. His aim, then, is to discover low, wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the Mysteries, and thus to destroy my line drawn between religion on one hand and myth or mere folk-lore on the other. Thus there is a being named Daramulun, of whose rites, among the Coast Murring, Icondensed the account of Mr. Howitt. From a statement by Mr.
Greenway Mr. Hartland learned that Daramulun's name is said to mean "leg on one side" or "lame". He, therefore, with fine humour, speaks of Daramulun as "a creator with a game leg," though when "Baiame" is derived by two excellent linguists, Mr. Ridley and Mr.
Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, "to make," Mr. Hartland is by no means so sure of the sense of the name. It happens to be inconvenient to him! Let the names mean what they may, Mr.
Hartland finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was initiated), that Daramulun is said to have "died," and that his spirit is now aloft. Who says so, and where, we are not informed, and the question is important.
J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.
Ibid., xxi. p. 294.
Ibid., xiii. p. 194.
For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal conduct of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in Baiame. Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for Iexplicitly said that I followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is mentioned. Mr. Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast Murring, while the narrator of the low myths, Mr.
Matthews, described those of a remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the chief, but a subordinate person. How Mr.
Matthews' friends can at once hold that Daramulun was "destroyed"by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that Daramulun's voice is heard at their rites, I don't know. Nor do I know why Mr.
