As to that despair, it does not exist. The religions of Babylon,
Greece, and Egypt lived side by side with superabundant magic. The
Australians, when their magic fails, merely say that some other black
fellow is working stronger counter-magic.[24]
However, that is a different question. The question at present is, Why
does Mr. Frazer not cite and confute the evidence of witnesses, whom
he quotes on other points, evidence fatal to his theory? Why does he
ignore it? Among so many witnesses, distrustful of facts that surprise
them, anxious to explain by borrowing, all cannot be biassed. If they
were, why is not the testimony of witnesses with the opposite bias also
discredited or ignored? Why is it welcomed? Mr. Frazer prefers the
opinion of Mr. Siebert, a German missionary, that the Dieri propitiate
ancestral spirits, to the opinion of Mr. Gason, that the being of
their belief is a good spirit who made them. I do not know which of
these gentlemen is right; possibly both views are held by different
native informants. But Mr. Siebert's ancestral spirits come through
Mr. Fison, who says: 'The more I learn about savage tribes, the more I
am convinced that among them ancestors grow into Gods '--so natural a
process where the names of the dead are tabooed!
'Oh no, we never mention them,
Their names are never heard.'
So they grow into gods! Mr. Fison is a Spencerian; so, for all that I
know, may Mr. Siebert be. If so, both have a theory and a bias, yet
they are cited. It is only witnesses who hold that the Australians,
certainly not, as a rule, ancestor worshippers, believe in a kind of
god, who are not deemed worthy of mention on this point, though quite
trustworthy on other points.
I cannot understand this method. The historian has a theory. He
searches for contradictory facts. The chemist or biologist does not
fail to mention facts hostile to his theory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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