302 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
This inverts all that has hitherto been called anthro- 
pology. Moreover, there are even very advanced nations 
* 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 
lias 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 retorted 
afresh that even among the lowest savages some sort of 
feeling of superior powers is manifested, the dispute 
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 pro- 
bably 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 
