Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol 1 | Page 6

science" has freed us from misdeeds which are
unknown to the Andamanese or the Australians. Thus there was, as
regards these points in morals, degeneracy from savagery as society
advanced, and I believe that there was also degeneration in religion. To
say this is not to hint at a theory of supernatural revelation to the
earliest men, a theory which I must, in limine disclaim.

[1] Tylor, "Limits of Savage Religion." Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, vol. xxi.
[2] Descent of Man, p. 68, 1871.
In vol. ii. p. 19 occurs a reference, in a note, to Mr. Hartland's criticism
of my ideas about Australian gods as set forth in the Making of
Religion. Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on Australian
religion in this book, does not consider that my note on p. 19 meets the
point of his argument. As to the Australians, I mean no more than that,
AMONG endless low myths, some of them possess a belief in a "maker
of everything," a primal being, still in existence, watching conduct,
punishing breaches of his laws, and, in some cases, rewarding the good
in a future life. Of course these are the germs of a sympathetic religion,
even if the being thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or humorous
contradictory myths. My position is not harmed by such myths, which
occur in all old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths were
attached to the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and popular
tales.
Thus, if there is nothing "sacred" in a religion because wild or wicked
fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing "sacred" in almost any
religion on earth.
Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of
Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially "sacred"
and to be distinguished from others, because they are inculcated at the
religious Mysteries of some tribes. His aim, then, is to discover low,
wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the Mysteries, and thus to destroy
my line drawn between religion on one hand and myth or mere
folk-lore on the other. Thus there is a being named Daramulun, of
whose rites, among the Coast Murring, I condensed the account of Mr.
Howitt.[1] From a statement by Mr. Greenway[2] Mr. Hartland learned
that Daramulun's name is said to mean "leg on one side" or "lame". He,
therefore, with fine humour, speaks of Daramulun as "a creator with a
game leg," though when "Baiame" is derived by two excellent linguists,
Mr. Ridley and Mr. Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, "to make," Mr.
Hartland is by no means so sure of the sense of the name. It happens to

be inconvenient to him! Let the names mean what they may, Mr.
Hartland finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was
initiated), that Daramulun is said to have "died," and that his spirit is
now aloft. Who says so, and where, we are not informed,[3] and the
question is important.
[1] J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.
[2] Ibid., xxi. p. 294.
[3] Ibid., xiii. p. 194.
For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal
conduct of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in
Baiame.[1] Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I explicitly said
that I followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is
mentioned. Mr. Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast
Murring, while the narrator of the low myths, Mr. Matthews, described
those of a remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the
chief, but a subordinate person. How Mr. Matthews' friends can at once
hold that Daramulun was "destroyed" by Baiame (their chief deity), and
also that Daramulun's voice is heard at their rites, I don't know.[2] Nor
do I know why Mr. Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where
Daramulun is "the evil spirit who rules the night,"[3] and introduces it
as an argument against the belief of a distant tribe, where, by Mr.
Howitt's account, Daramulun is not an evil spirit, but "the master" of all,
whose abode is above the sky, and to whom are attributed powers of
omnipotence and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the power "to do
anything and to go anywhere. . . . To his direct ordinances are attributed
the social and moral laws of the community."[4] This is not "an evil
spirit"! When Mr. Hartland goes for scandals to a remote tribe of a
different creed that he may discredit the creed of the Coast Murring, he
might as well attribute to the Free Kirk "the errors of Rome". But Mr.
Hartland does it![5] Being "cunning of fence" he may reply that I also
spoke loosely of Wiraijuri and Coast Murring as, indifferently,
Daramulunites. I did, and I