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The "animist" ill-acquainted with the savage's language and modes of thought; excluded from those inner "mysteries" which figure in nearly every savage religion; confounding the symbolism, the popular mythology, and also the corruptions, distortions, and abuses which are the parasites of all religion, with the religion itself, can easily come away with the impression that there is nothing but ghost-worship, priestcraft, and superstition, no conception whatever of a personal "Power that makes for Righteousness."
But this earliest ghost-worship must have long preceded that period of mental development in which men first became capable of forming abstract ideas.
The Australians 'show us not much persistence in ghost-propitiation, which, if it exists, ceases when the corpses are tied up and buried, or after they are burned, or after the bones, carried about for a while, are exposed on platforms. Yet many Australian tribes possess a moral Supreme Being. In fact ghost-worship, in Mr.
Huxley is hard put to it for evidence of ancestor-worship or ghost-worship in Israel when he looks for indications of these rites in 'the singular weight attached to the veneration of parents in the Fourth Commandment. The Fourth Commandment, of course, is a slip of the pen.
The latter two would seem rather of the period in which a true mythology an enormous polytheism had been developed out of the primitive ghost-worship.
It is notable that in this religion we hear nothing of ancestor-worship; all that is stated as to ghosts has been reported. We find the cult of an all-powerful being, in whose ritual sacrifice is the only feature that suggests ghost-worship. The popular tales and historical reminiscences of the last generation entirely bear out by their allusions Mr.
He adds: 'The Fifth Commandment, as it stands, would be an excellent compromise between ancestor-worship and Monotheism. Long may children practise this excellent compromise! It is really too far-fetched to reason thus: 'People were bidden to honour their parents, as a compromise between Monotheism and ghost-worship. Hard, hard bestead is he who has to reason in that fashion!
So far we can go, but not farther, as to the fact of priority in evolution. Nevertheless we meet, among the most backward peoples known to us, among men just emerged from the palaeolithic stage of culture, men who are involved in dread of ghosts, a religious Idea which certainly is not born of ghost-worship, for by these men, ancestral ghosts are not worshipped.
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