ious.

So far, then, the nature of things and of the reasoning faculty does not
seem to give the lie to the old Degeneration theory.

To these conclusions, as far as they are matters of scientific opinion, we
have been led by nothing but the study of anthropology.

[Footnote 1: _Myths of the New World_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 2: _Prim. Cult_. i. 35.]

[Footnote 3: _Introduction_, p. 199; also p. 161.]

[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360,361.]

[Footnote 5: Prof. Menzies, _History of Religion_, p. 23.]

[Footnote 6: [Greek: legomenai theion anagchai.] Porphyry.]

[Footnote 7: Ixtlilochitl. Balboa, _Hist. du Perou_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 104, 105.]

[Footnote 9: Op. cit. p. 106.]

[Footnote 10: On the Glenelg some caves and mountain tops are haunted or
holy. Waitz, vi. 804, No authority cited.]

[Footnote 11: _Religion of Semites_, p. 110.]

[Footnote 12: _Rel. Sem_. p. 71.]

[Footnote 13: Howitt, _J.A.T_. 1884, p. 187.]

[Footnote 14: Op. cit. p. 188.]

[Footnote 15: _Rel. Sem_. p. 207.]

[Footnote 16: _Rel. Sem_. p. 225.]

[Footnote 17: Op. cit. p. 247.]

[Footnote 18: Op. cit. p. 269.]

[Footnote 19: Op. cit. p. 277.]

[Footnote 20: Op. cit. p. 343. Citing Gen. xxii 2 Kings xxi. 6, Micah
vi. 7, 2 Kings iii. 27.]

[Footnote 21: I mean, does not occur to my knowledge. New evidence is
always upsetting anthropological theories.]

XVI

THEORIES OF JEHOVAH

All speculation on the curly history of religion is apt to end in the
endeavour to see how far the conclusions can be made to illustrate the
faith of Israel. Thus, the theorist who believes in ancestor-worship as
the key of all the creeds will see in Jehovah a developed ancestral
ghost, or a kind of fetish-god, attached to a stone--perhaps an ancient
sepulchral stele of some desert sheikh.

The exclusive admirer of the hypothesis of Totemism will find evidence for
his belief in worship of the golden calf and the bulls. The partisan of
nature-worship will insist on Jehovah's connection with storm, thunder,
and the fire of Sinai. On the other hand, whoever accepts our suggestions
will incline to see, in the early forms of belief in Jehovah, a shape of
the widely diffused conception of a Moral Supreme Being, at first (or, at
least, when our information begins) envisaged in anthropomorphic form,
but gradually purged of all local traits by the unexampled and unique
inspiration of the great Pro