5. The religion of Israel. Probably a revival and purification of the old conception of a moral, beneficent creator, whose creed had been involved in sacrifice and anthropomorphic myth. In all the stages thus roughly sketched, myths of the lowest sort prevail, except in the records of the last stage, where the documents have been edited by earnest monotheists. If this theory be approximately correct, man's earliest religious ideas may very well have consisted, in a sense, of dependence on a supreme moral being who, when attempts were made by savages to describe the modus of his working, became involved in the fancies of mythology. How this belief in such a being arose we have no evidence to prove. We make no hint at a sensus numinis, or direct revelation. While offering no hypothesis of the origin of belief in a moral creator we may present a suggestion. Mr. Darwin says about early man: "The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetichism, polytheism and ultimately monotheism, would infallibly lead him, so long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs".(1) Now, accepting Mr. Darwin's theory that early man had "high mental faculties," the conception of a Maker of things does not seem beyond his grasp. Man himself made plenty of things, and could probably conceive of a being who made the world and the objects in it. "Certainly there must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too," said an Eskimo to a missionary.(2) The goodness is inferred by the Eskimo from his own contentment with "the things which are made".(3) (1) Darwin, Descent of Man, i. p. 66. (2) Cranz, i. 199. (3) Romans, i. 19. Another example of barbaric man "seeking after God" may be adduced. What the Greenlander said is corroborated by what a Kaffir said. Kaffir religion is mainly animistic, ancestral spirits receive food and sacrifice--there is but an evanescent tradition of a "Lord in Heaven". Thus a very respectable Kaffir said to M. Arbrousset, "your tidings (Christianity) are what I want; and I was seeking before I knew you.... I asked myself sorrowful questions. 'Who has touched the stars with his hands?... Who makes the waters flow?... Who can have given earth the wisdom and power to produce corn?' Then I buried my face in my hands." "This," says Sir John Lubbock, "was, however, an exceptional case. As a general rule savages do not set themselves to think out such questions."(1) (1) Origin of Civilisation, p. 201.