must be a
reason for these phenomena, and that reason, as it seems to me, is the
overlaying and supersession of a rudely Theistic by an animistic creed.
That one cause would explain, and does colligate, all the facts.

There remains a point on which misconception proves to be possible. It
will be shown, contrary to the current hypothesis, that the religion
of the lowest races, in its highest form, sanctions morality. That
morality, again, in certain instances, demands unselfishness. Of course
we are not claiming for that doctrine any supernatural origin. Religion,
if it sanctions ethics at all, will sanction those which the conscience
accepts, and those ethics, in one way or other, must have been evolved.
That the "cosmical" law is "the weakest must go to the wall" is
generally conceded. Man, however, is found trying to reverse the law, by
equal and friendly dealing (at least within what is vaguely called "the
tribe"). His religion, as in Australia, will be shown to insist on this
unselfishness. How did he evolve his ethics?

"Be it little or be it much they get," says Dampier about the
Australians in 1688, "every one has his part, as well the young and
tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to get abroad as the
strong and lusty." This conduct reverses the cosmical process, and
notoriously civilised society, Christian society, does not act on these
principles. Neither do the savages, who knock the old and feeble on the
head, or deliberately leave them to starve, act on these principles,
sanctioned by Australian religion, but (according to Mr. Dawson) NOT
carried out in Australian practice. "When old people become infirm... it
is lawful and customary to kill them."(1)

(1) Australian Aborigines, p. 62.

As to the point of unselfishness, evolutionists are apt to account for
it by common interest. A tribe in which the strongest monopolise what is
best will not survive so well as an unselfish tribe in the struggle for
existence. But precisely the opposite is true, aristocracy marks the
more successful barbaric races, and an aristocratic slave-holding
tribe could have swept Australia as the Zulus swept South Africa. That
aristocracy and acquisition of separate property are steps in advance
on communistic savagery all history declares. Therefore a tribe which
in Australia developed private property, and reduced its neighbours to
slavery, would have been better fitted to survive than such a tribe as
Dampier des