n, says Mr.
Abercromby, "must, if this view is correct, be of late origin". But the
view is not correct. The far-seeing powerful Maker beyond the sky is
found among the very backward races who have not developed helpers
nearer man, dwelling round what would be his door, if door he was
civilised enough to possess. Such near neighbouring gods, of human
needs, capable of being bullied, or propitiated by sacrifice, are found
in races higher than the lowest, who, for their easily procurable aid,
have allowed the Maker to sink into an otiose god, or a mere name. Mr.
Abercromby unconsciously proves our case by quoting the example of a
Samoyede. This man knew a Sky-god, Num; that conception was familiar
to him. He also knew a familiar spirit. On Mr. Abercromby's theory he
should have resorted for help to the Sky-god, not to the sprite. But he
did the reverse: he said, "I cannot approach Num, he is too far away; if
I could reach him I should not beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but
should go myself; but I cannot". For this precise reason, people who
have developed the belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with
a spell to constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases
almost forget, their Maker. But He is worshipped by low savages, who do
not propitiate ghosts and who have no gods in wells and trees, close at
hand. It seems an obvious inference that the greater God is the earlier
evolved.

These are among the difficulties of the current anthropological theory.
There is, however, a solution by which the weakness of the divine
conception, its neglected, disused aspect among barbaric races, might
be explained by anthropologists, without regarding it as an obsolescent
form of a very early idea. This solution is therefore in common use.
It is applied to the deity revealed in the ancient mysteries of the
Australians, and it is employed in American and African instances.

The custom is to say that the highest divine being of American or
African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is,
especially, a savage refraction from the God of missionaries. If this
can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life"
of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian
conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint
unsuccessful refraction. He has been introduced by Europeans, it is
argued, but is not in harmony with his new environment, and so is
"half-remembe