Of the large class of books reporting the manners and beliefs of special savage races we may specify-- D. G. Brinton, _The Myths of the New World_, 1896. W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, 1876. Kingsley, Miss, _West African Studies_, 1899. Callaway, _The Religious System of the Amazulu_, 1863-72. Duff Macdonald, _Africana, the Heart of Heathen Africa_, 1882. G. Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-Western and Western Australia_, 1841. Spencer and Gilpen. _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899. CHAPTER IV EARLY DEVELOPMENTS--BELIEF We have seen from what materials early man made his gods. As the gods differed in their origin, they differed also from the very first in the mode of their development. The great nature-gods gave rise to one kind of religion, and the minor nature-gods to another, the thought of the departed members of the household to a third. But these various religions could not develop side by side without influencing each other. These different worships began in the very earliest times to get mixed up together; there is none of the great religions which we do not find to be a combination of them. It will be well to consider them in the first place separately. 1. Growth of the Great Gods.--Taking them in the order we have already followed, we come first to the great nature-worship, of which heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, dawn and sunset, and then the phenomena of the weather, rain, storm, and thunder and lightning, are the objects. It cannot be too clearly borne in mind that what was worshipped was originally the natural object itself, regarded, after the earliest habit of thought, as living. To heaven itself, to the sun as he rose or set, to the storm itself, men addressed prayers and made offerings; and in many quarters, both among savages and in the great religions, the same thing occurs to this day.