After maintaining (what is readily granted) that negroes have a religion composed of many elements, Mr. Muller tries to discredit the evidence about the creeds of savages, and discourses on the many minute shades of progress which exist among tribes too often lumped together as if they were all in the same condition. Here he will have all scientific students of savage life on his side. It remains true, however, that certain elements of savage practice, fetichism being one of them, are practically ubiquitous. Thus, when Mr. Muller speaks of 'the influence of public opinion' in biassing the narrative of travellers, we must not forget that the strongest evidence about savage practice is derived from the 'undesigned coincidence' of the testimonies of all sorts of men, in all ages, and all conditions of public opinion. 'Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports from various quarters of the globe,' wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors, merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard of, such institutions as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence is so strong, because the witnesses are so astonished. They do not know that anyone but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before their eyes. And when Mr. Muller tries to make the testimony about savage faith still more untrustworthy, by talking of the 'absence of recognised authority among savages,' do not let us forget that custom ([Greek]) is a recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is inflicted for transgression of certain rules. These rules, generally speaking, are of a religious nature, and the religion to which they testify is of the sort known (too vaguely) as 'fetichistic.' Let us keep steadily before our minds, when people talk of lack of evidence, that we have two of the strongest sorts of evidence in the world for the kind of religion which least suits Mr. Muller's argument--(1) the undesigned coincidences of testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and sanction of elementary criminal law. Mr. Muller's own evidence is that much-disputed work, where 'all men see what they want to see, as in the clouds,' and where many see systematised fetichism--the Veda. {222}