VTTT 



THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY P4:> 



belief that the rude tribes of Israel did not share 

 the notions from which their far more civilised 

 neighbours had not emancipated themselves. 



But it is surely needless to carry the comparison 

 further. Out of the abundant evidence at com- 

 mand, I think that sufficient has been produced 

 to furnish ample grcmnds for the belief, that the 

 old Israelites of the time of Samuel entertained 

 theological conceptions which were on a level with 

 those current among the more civilised of the 

 Polynesian islanders, though their ethical code 

 may possibly, in some respects, have been more 

 advanced. 1 



A theological system of essentially similar char- 

 acter, exhibiting the same fundamental conceptions 

 respecting the continued existence and incessant 

 interference in human affairs of disembodied 

 spirits, prevails, or formerly prevailed, among the 

 whole of the inhabitants of the Polynesian and 

 Melanesian islands, and among the people of 

 Australia, notwithstanding the wide differences in 

 physical character and in grade of civilisation which 

 obtain among them. And the same proposition is 

 true of the people who inhabit the riverain shores 

 of the Pacific Ocean, whether Dyaks, Malays, 

 Indo-Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, the wild tribes 

 of America, or the highly civilised old Mexicans 

 and Peruvians. It is no less true of the Mongolic 



1 Sec Lippert's excellent remarks on this subject, Der Seelen- 

 cult, p. 89, 



