302 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



This inverts all that has hitherto been called anthro- 

 pology. Moreover, there are even very advanced na- 

 tions without any consciousness of God. Schweinfurth 

 relates that the Niam-Niam, that highly interesting dwarf 

 people of Central Africa, have no word for God, and 

 therefore it must be supposed, not the idea; and Moritz 

 Wagner has given a whole selection of reports on the 

 absence of religious consciousness in inferior nations. 

 When, in spite of all these corroborations, it is always re- 

 torted afresh that even among the lowest savages some 

 sort of feeling of superior powers is manifested, the dis- 

 pute finally results in mere verbal criticism, which has 

 no farther interest for the doctrine of Descent. 



And yet we cannot leave this subject without alluding 

 to a fact, universally known, but, strange to say, not as 

 yet employed in this connection, and which, as it would 

 seem, is by itself sufficient to invalidate the assertion that 

 the idea of God is immanent in human nature. We 

 mean the fact that many millions in the most cultivated 

 nations, and among them the most eminent and lucid 

 thinkers, have not the consciousness of a personal God; 

 those millions of whom the heroic David Strauss became 

 the spokesman when he adopted for his own the motto 

 of his favourite, Ulrich von Hutten: I have dared it — 

 Jacta est alea! 



And now as to Language? All modern philologists 

 agree that languages are developed, and that most prob- 

 ably all linguistic families pass through three stages. In 

 the stage of the radical languages all words are roots, 

 and are merely placed side by side. In the second stage, 

 that of the agglutinated languages, one root defines the 

 other, and the defining root ultimately becomes merely 



