"disease, mischief and wisdom" is certainly a religious belief not
conspicuously held by "the beasts"; yet all religion was denied to
the Australians by the very author who prints (in however erroneous
a style) an account of part of their creed. This writer merely
inherited the old missionary habit of speaking about the god of a
non-Christian people as a "demon" or an "evil spirit".


[1] See Primitive Culture, second edition, i. 419.


Dr. Lang's negative opinion was contradicted in testimony published
by himself, an appendix by the Rev. Mr. Ridley, containing evidence
of the belief in Baiame. "Those who have learned that 'God' is the
name by which we speak of the Creator, say that Baiame is God."[1]


[1] Lang's Queensland, p. 445, 1861.


As "a minimum definition of religion," Mr. Tylor has suggested "the
belief in spiritual beings". Against this it may be urged that,
while we have no definite certainty that any race of men is
destitute of belief in spiritual beings, yet certain moral and
creative deities of low races do not seem to be envisaged as
"spiritual" at all. They are regarded as EXISTENCES, as BEINGS,
unconditioned by Time, Space, or Death, and nobody appears to have
put the purely metaphysical question, "Are these beings spiritual
or material?"[1] Now, if a race were discovered which believed in
such beings, yet had no faith in spirits, that race could not be