Evolution of Theology. 235 



day, have had or now have it. At the same time, it is be- 

 lieved that none have ever been discovered entirely devoid 

 of a conception of beings superior to themselves, whom they 

 worship, or at least recognize in some form of observance. 

 When the Catholic mission of Dolores was established on 

 the shores of San Francisco Bay, among tribes extremely 

 low in the scale of intelligence, the missionary there placed 

 in charge reported that he found the field wholly unoccupied ; 

 for, in the vocabulary of these peoples, there was no word for 

 god, angel or devil. And Spanish historians have alleged that 

 certain of the natives of South America had no inclination 

 to worship anything, high or low, neither from interested 

 motives nor from fear. But in discussing these supposed 

 exceptions, Mr. Spencer agrees with Sir John Lubbock that 

 the existence among them of funeral ceremonies implies 

 some idea, however vague, of ghost and ancestor worship. 



It is in the inability of primitive races, and of low types 

 of the present day, to generalize upon observed facts and 

 phenomena, that we find the explanation of the persistence 

 of a low degree of mentality in large areas, and, at the same 

 time, the clue to the successive gradual enlargement and 

 development of theistic ideas among the nations. The 

 savage knows particulars and can deal with isolated appear- 

 ances, but deduces from these no general conceptions. He 

 knows his own hut and his own weapon, and the hut and 

 weapon of his neighbor ; but to draw from these, or any 

 number of instances of these, the generic idea, hut or 

 weapon, he is wholly incompetent, — and remains incompe- 

 tent, until, having been brought within the influence of 

 some environment favorable to mental progress, he, at first 

 unconsciously, takes his earliest step in generalization.* 



It is just here that the investigator must bring into use 

 the historical imagination. We deal, so customarily and 

 spontaneously, with abstract ideas, our thoughts are fed and 

 nourished in such an atmosphere of philosophical and gen- 

 eralized conceptions, that we fail clearly to recognize that 

 these are the product of ages of inherited mental experience. 

 Our common speech is of laws, rules, causes and effects, 

 principles. But these are, concededly, purely subjective 

 ideas, answering to no single external fact, and merely 



Dr. Romanes, in the work before quoted, concludes, after an elaborate discus- 

 sion of all prior views, that the faculty of induction or generalization, or 

 abstraction, is the essential and controlling difference between man and the 

 brute. 



