302 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



This inverts all that has hitherto been called anthro- 

 pology. Moreover, there are even very advanced nations 

 without any consciousness of God. Schweinfurth relates 

 that the Niam-Niam, that highly interesting dwarf people 

 of Central Africa, have no word for God, and therefore 

 it must be supposed, not the idea ; and Moritz Wagner 

 has given a whole selection of reports on the absence 

 of religious consciousness in inferior nations. When, in 

 spite of all these corroborations, it is always retorted 

 afresh that even among the lowest savages some sort of 

 feeling of superior powers is manifested, the dispute 

 finally results in mere verbal criticism, which has no 

 farther interest for the doctrine of Descent. 



And yet we cannot leave this subject without alluding 

 to a fact, universally known, but, strange to say, not as 

 yet employed in this connection, and which, as it would 

 seem, is by itself sufficient to invalidate the assertion 

 that the idea of God is immanent in human nature. We 

 mean the fact that many millions in the most cultivated 

 nations, and among them the most eminent and lucid 

 thinkers, have not the consciousness of a personal God ; 

 those millions of whom the heroic David Strauss became 

 the spokesman when he adopted for his own the motto 

 of his favourite, Ulrich von Hutten : I have dared it 

 Jacta est alea ! 



And now as to Language ? All modern philologists 

 agree that languages are developed, and that most pro- 

 bably all linguistic families pass through three stages. In 

 the stage of the radical languages all words are roots, 

 and are merely placed side by side. In the second stage, 

 that of the agglutinated languages, one root defines the 

 other, and the defining root ultimately becomes merely 



