more civilised of the Polynesian islanders, though their ethical
code may possibly, in some respects, have been
more advanced.<24>

A theological system of essentially similar character,
exhibiting the same fundamental conceptions respecting the
continued existence and incessant interference in human affairs
of disembodied spirits, prevails, or formerly prevailed, among
the whole of the inhabitants of the Polynesian and Melanesian
islands, and among the people of Australia, notwithstanding the
wide differences in physical character and in grade of
civilisation which obtain among them. And the same proposition
is true of the people who inhabit the riverain shores of the
Pacific Ocean whether Dyaks, Malays, Indo-Chinese, Chinese,
Japanese, the wild tribes of America, or the highly civilised
old Mexicans and Peruvians. It is no less true of the Mongolic
nomads of Northern Asia, of the Asiatic Aryans and of the
Ancient Greeks and Romans, and it holds good among the
Dravidians of the Dekhan and the negro tribes of Africa.
No tribe of savages which has yet been discovered, has been
conclusively proved to have so poor a theological equipment as
to be devoid of a belief in ghosts, and in the utility of some
form of witchcraft, in influencing those ghosts. And there is no
nation, modern or ancient, which, even at this moment, has
wholly given up the belief; and in which it has not, at one time
or other, played a great part in practical life.

This sciotheism,<25> as it might be called, is found, in
several degrees of complexity, in rough correspondence with the
stages of social organisation, and, like these, separated by no