cause. They are the results of influences utterly beyond his
understanding--supernatural,--matters upon which imagination is allowed
free scope to run riot, and from which spring up a legion of myths, or
attempts to represent in some manner these incomprehensible processes,
grotesque or poetic, according to the character of the people with which
they originate, which, if their growth be not disturbed by extraneous
influences, eventually develop into the national creed. The most
ordinary events of the savage's every-day life do not admit of a natural
solution; his whole existence is bound in, from birth to death, by a
network of miracles, and regulated, in its smallest details, by unseen
powers of whom he knows little or nothing.

13. Hence it is that, in primitive societies, the functions of
legislator, judge, priest, and medicine man are all combined in one
individual, the great medium of communication between man and the
unknown, whose person is pre-eminently sacred. The laws that are to
guide the community come in some mysterious manner through him from the
higher powers. If two members of the clan are involved in a quarrel, he
is appealed to to apply some test in order to ascertain which of the two
is in the wrong--an ordeal that can have no judicial operation, except
upon the assumption of the existence of omnipotent beings interested in
the discovery of evil-doers, who will prevent the test from operating
unjustly. Maladies and famines are unmistakeable signs of the
displeasure of the good, or spite of the bad spirits, and are to be
averted by some propitiatory act on the part of the sufferers, or the
mediation of the priest-doctor. The remedy that would put an end to a
long-continued drought will be equally effective in arresting an
epidemic.

14. But who, and of what nature, are these supernatural powers whose
influences are thus brought to bear upon every-day life, and who appear
to take such an interest in the affairs of mankind? It seems that there
are three great principles at work in the evolution and modification of
the ideas upon this subject, which must now be shortly stated.

15. (i.) The first of these is the apparent incapacity of the majority
of mankind to accept a purely monotheistic creed. It is a demonstrable
fact that the primitive religions now open to observation attribute
specific events and results to distinct supernatural beings; and there
can be little doubt that this is the initial step