THE CONTROVERSIALIST IJJ 



speculation which is the most widely spread of all, 

 and the most deeply rooted among uncivilised men. 1 



There is nothing new in the foregoing to readers 

 of Kuenen's great work on the Religion of Israel^ nor 

 to those who have compared the archaic elements in 

 the Bible with the details of belief and ritual among 

 the lower races given in books of the type of Tyior's 

 Primitive Culture and Frazer's Golden Bough. But, 

 apart from the need of restating the obvious, Hux- 

 ley's purpose and skill were shown in his focussing 

 one or more salient features of the old Israelitic 

 theology for comparison with active beliefs among 

 lower races of whom he knew something at first hand, 

 or concerning whom he had cogent testimony. For 

 the first of these he drew on his Rattlesnake experi- 

 ences. In December, 1848, that vessel was anchored 

 off Mount Ernest, an island in Torres Straits. Hux- 

 ley and a shipmate, whom he calls B., went ashore, 

 and in course of time became intimate with an old 

 native named Paouda. The old man took to B. be- 

 cause he believed him to be his father-in-law. 



His grounds for that singular conviction were very 

 remarkable. We had made a long stay at Cape York 

 hard by : and in accordance with a theory which is 

 widely spread among the Australians, that white men 

 are the incarnated spirits of black men, B. was held 

 to be the ghost of a certain Mount Ernest native, one 



1 Coll. Essays, iv. p. 317. 



