As to defiance or contumely towards the Gods, finally, we have the testimony of the Swiss missionary Junod that the South African Thonga, whom he studied very closely, have in their ritual "a regular insulting of the Gods." (Life of a South African Tribe, ii, 1912, p. 384.) Why not? "Prayers to the ancestors ... are ... absolutely devoid of awe" (p. 385), though "the ancestor-Gods are certainly the most powerful spiritual agency acting on man's life" (p. 361); and "the spirits of the ancestors are the main objects of religious worship" (p. 344). The Thonga, again, use "neither idolatry nor fetishism," having no "idols" (p. 388), though they recognize "hidden virtues" in plants, animals, and stones (p. 345). They simply regard their ancestor-Gods very much as they do their aged people, whom they generally treat with little consideration. But the dead can do harm, and must therefore be propitiated--as savages propitiate, with fear or malice or derision in their hearts, as the case may be. (Cp. p. 379.) On the other hand, despite the denial of their "fetishism," they believe that ancestor-Gods may come in the shape of animals; and they so venerate a kind of palladium (made up like a medicine-man's amulet) as to raise the question whether this kind of belief is not just that which Miss Kingsley called "fetish." (Junod, pp. 358, 373-74.) Whatever may be the essence, or the varieties, of fetishism, it is clear that the beating of idols or threatening of Gods does not amount to rational doubt concerning the supernatural. Some general approach to that attitude may perhaps be inferred in the case of an economic revolt against the burdens of a highly specialized religious system, which may often have occurred in unwritten history. We shall note a recorded instance of the kind in connection with the question whether there are any savage tribes without religion. But it occurs in the somewhat highly evolved barbarism of pre-Christian Hawaii; and it can set up no inference as to any development of critical unbelief at lower levels. In the long stage of lower savagery, then, the only approach to freethinking that would seriously affect general belief would presumably be that very credulity which gave foothold to religious beliefs to begin with. That is to say, without anything in the nature of general criticism of any story or doctrine, one such might to some extent supersede another, in virtue of the relative gift of persuasion or personal weight of the propounders. Up to a certain point persons with a turn for myth or ritual-making would compete, and might even call in question each other's honesty, as well as each other's inspiration.