Brahm. This is surely Theism in its highest conception.[89] In regard to
the peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us "there is no
need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the
existence of a God, or of a future state--the facts being universally
admitted.... On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to
their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state,
they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a
tolerably clear conception on all these subjects."[90] And so far from
the New Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured by
E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Holland, they
have a clear and well-defined idea of a "_Great Spirit_," the maker of
all things.

[Footnote 87: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. i. p. 46.]

[Footnote 88: Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 59: _Edin.
Review_,1862, art "Recent Researches on Buddhism." See also Mueller's
"Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. ch. i. to vi.]

[Footnote 89: "It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both
atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism
is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense
every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the
gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a
Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the
Brahmans admit, in some form or another, the existence of an Absolute
and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to
exist."--Mueller, "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. pp. 224,5.

Buddha, which means "intelligence," "clear light," "perfect wisdom," was
not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but
Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence.--Maurice,
"Religions of the World," p. 102.]

[Footnote 90: "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," p.
158.]

Now had the idea of God rested _solely_ on tradition, it were the most
natural probability that it might be lost, nay, _must_ be lost, amongst
those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far
removed from the primitive cradle of humanity in the East. The people
who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the
earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after
the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God