302 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



tween a state of perfect independence and one of despotism. 

 It is an erroneous view to consider this oscillation among rude 

 nations as degrees of social development, instead of attributing 

 it to its natural cause. 



The disputes occurring between indviduals are either ad- 

 justed by a third party who interposes his authority or who is 

 chosen to act as arbiter, or what is more usual among primitive 

 nations, the interested party is left to find his own remedy. 

 Among many such peoples, ordeals are instituted to decide the 

 matter. The disputes among individuals frequently involve 

 whole families and tribes in feuds ; but it is chiefly supersti- 

 tion or hunger and miseiy which lead to wars. 



The religious ideas of primitive peoples have already been 

 touched upon in a general sense. They are based upon a per- 

 sonification of striking natural forces on which man believes his 

 fate depends, ascribing any misfortune to the action of inde- 

 pendent spirits. Ungrateful as man generally is when in luck, 

 he sees, even when in a primitive state, nothing in the success of 

 his plans but the usual course of nature or the result of his 

 sagacity. Thus originally his view of nature which coincides 

 with his religious ideas is about this that among the spirits 

 which direct nature and the fates of man, the evil spirits are 

 either exclusively active, as is asserted of the Indians of Carac- 

 cas, who only believe in a wicked original being, 1 or so far pre- 

 dominant that the good spirits are made subordinate. Though 

 the existence of the latter is not altogether denied, they are 

 but little attended to either in thought or prayers, worship 

 or sacrifice, since they are already by their nature friendly to 

 man. All these spirits, are of course, conceived as analogous 

 to the nature of man. 



The religion of the primitive man is thus throughout a 

 crude polytheism 2 without poetry, even without mythology, or 



1 Depons, in " Magaz. v. Merkw. Reisenbeschrift," xxix, p. 143. 



2 Rougement, however (" Le People Primitif," 1855), considers mono- 

 theism as the original religion imparted to man by an original revelation, 

 and that pantheism formed the transition to polytheism. He endeavours to 

 trace this primitive monotheism in the confused legends of uncultured 

 peoples, by ascribing a cosmogonic meaning to these myths. It is unques- 

 tionable that some of the most remote peoples frequently agree in this re- 

 spect. Thus, the flood legends are almost universally found in America, 



