Thus beginning as little
more than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends to
blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one. Only in speaking
of him as a god we must beware of importing into the savage
conception of deity those very abstract and complex ideas which we
attach to the term. Our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit
of a long intellectual and moral evolution, and they are so far from
being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them when
they are explained to him. Much of the controversy which has raged
as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a
mutual misunderstanding. The savage does not understand the thoughts
of the civilised man, and few civilised men understand the thoughts
of the savage. When the savage uses his word for god, he has in his
mind a being of a certain sort: when the civilised man uses his word
for god, he has in his mind a being of a very different sort; and
if, as commonly happens, the two men are equally unable to place
themselves at the other's point of view, nothing but confusion and
mistakes can result from their discussions.
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