eme Being thus: A god of the polytheistic crowd is simply
raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no
polytheism. Or the principle of Manes worship may make a Supreme Deity
out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being
supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in
Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative
philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through
and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach
their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all
powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and
calm ... too benevolent to need human worship ... too merely existent to
concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always
animistic.

Now, in addition to the objections already noted in passing, how can we
tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception,
_animistic_ at all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, as
_Spirit_? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question
'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in
Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathless _Being_, no
question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for
the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to
lead to some very singular conclusions.

It will be more fully stated and illustrated, presently, but I find that
it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a
heaven-god; he says 'it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to
the heavens _long ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and God
spiritual_?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I
aware that it has been developed previously.

The notion of a God about whose spirituality nobody has inquired is new to
us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain
level of culture, such a Divine Being _must_ be animistic, _must_ be a
'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks
Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings
who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called
spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but, _ex hypothesi_, the Beings 'who
never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of
thought do not