But the chief cause of indifference is the character of our evidence.
We can find anything we want to find people say--not only 'the man
in the street' but the learned say--among reports of the doings of
savage and barbarous races. We find what we want, and to what we do
not want we are often blind. For example, nothing in savage religion
is better vouched for than the belief in a being whom narrators of
every sort call 'a Creator who holds all in his power.' I take the
first instance of this kind that comes to hand in opening Mr. Tylor's
'Primitive Culture.' The being is he whom the natives of Canada 'call
"Andouagni," without, however, having any form or method of prayer to
him.' The date of this evidence is 1558. It is obvious that Andouagni
(to take one case out of a multitude) was not invented in the despair
of magic. Mysticism has been called the despair of philosophy, and Mr.
Frazer, as we shall see, regards religion as the despair of magic. By
his theory man, originally without religion, and trusting in magic,
found by experience that magic could not really control the weather and
the food supply. Man therefore dreamed that 'there were other beings,
like himself, but far stronger,' who, unseen, controlled what his
magic could not control. 'To these mighty beings ... man now addressed
himself ... beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him with all good
things....'[2]
But nobody beseeched Andouagni to do anything. The Canadians had 'no
method or form of prayer to him.'[3] Therefore Andouagni was not
invented because magic failed, and therefore this great power was
dreamed of, and his mercy was beseeched with prayers for good things.
That was not the process by which Andouagni was evolved, because nobody
prayed to him in 1558, nor have we reason to believe that any one ever
did.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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