TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 765 



2. A mental stumbling-block too familiar to need explanation. It ia not 

 •wholly unknown in more advanced times. 



'3. Observation and induction, leading up to the correct inference of cause and 

 effect, demand a sustained mental effort of which primitive man was incapable. 

 He accepted as cause and effect any set of phenomena commonly or strikingly 

 associated in his experience. On the other hand, he failed to perceive cause and 

 effect in the simplest and most universal biological processes or physical sequences. 

 It is doubtful further whether, as Dr. Frazer thinks, he had grasped the idea of 

 the universality of Nature involved in the inference of cause and effect. 



Since all human ideas must have passed through the stage characterised by the 

 deficiencies just mentioned, we may apply the test to certain theories of the origin 

 of religious ideas : — 



1. One Supreme God. — We may safely assert that primitive man was incapable 

 of the abstraction and generalisation requisite for forming the idea of one Supreme 

 God, omnipotent and universal, distinct and separate from humanity — the Creator 

 of the world. 



2. Phallic worship. — If not otherwise discredited as an origin, phallic worship 

 would have to be ruled out for similar reasons. Primitive man was incapable of 

 mentally isolating a single faculty or power sufficiently to exalt it for worship. 



3. The ' ghost theory ' demands a more distinct conception of personality and a 

 clearer realisation of the ideas of life and death than primitive man possessed. 

 Pie had not reached the belief in death from natural causes, and the personality 

 of a deceased man might, to his thinking, be re-incarnate in his descendants. 



4. Dr. Jevons's theory of the continuum in religion implies the existence of a 

 single clear, persistent perception dissociated from the general stock of primitive 

 ideas, and apparently on a higher level. 



The absence of clear and distinct ideas on any subject in the early stages of 

 development makes it improbable that any single idea whatever is to be regarded 

 as the origin of religion. Probably a number of separate ideas combined later, but 

 all theories on this subject must be in harmony with the general stage of primitive 

 development so far as ascertained. 



8. On the Lolos and other Tribes of Western China. 

 By Augustine Henry. 



The Paper describes (1) the various Tibetan tribes on the western border of 

 Szechuan ; (2) the migratory Miao-tze from Kweichow, whose tonal monosyllabic 

 language has a vocabulary distinct from that of the other languages of that group ; 

 (3) the Yaos, a farniing and hunting people who are probably the aborigines of 

 KAvangsi, and inhabit isolated villages from Kwangd to Szemao, and also dwell in 

 French Laos ; (4) the Shans of the low-lying plains of South Yunnan and Upper 

 Burma, who are akin to the Siamese ; (5) the dark swarthy Woni, a very uniform- 

 featured people, aboriginal south of the Red River of Yunnan ; (G) the diminutive 

 Pw/rt, 4-4^ feet in stature, who speak a dialect of Lolo, and are regarded as 

 wizards by the Chinese ; and whose love of gay clothing, and lively temperament 

 afford further parallels to the traditions of a diminutive fairy-folk, which Dr. Rhys 

 has collected in Western Europe. 



In addition to these, the paper describes (7) the Lolos, a tall handsome people, 

 whose home is in Szechuan, but who are found all over Yunnan and in a few dis- 

 tricts in Kweichow. Their language is tonal and monosyllabic, and the author 

 contends that a comparison of Lolo and Miao-tze speech with Chinese shows that 

 the tonal monosyllabic languages form a distinct primitive group, and are not the 

 result of breaking down a polysyllabic agglutinative language. 



The peculiar script of the Lolos is described and discussed. Though of hiero- 

 glyphic character it is not derivative from the Chinese script. It runs in vertical 

 columns from left to right. The analogy of the later Syriac script suggests that 



