spirits; and these naturally became the divinities par excellence whom it was specially important to worship. Thus we arrive at last at the belief in one God, at the moment when absolute monarchy is established in the spirit world.
But alongside of this ancestor-worship, we recognise as a powerful factor in the development of superstitious ideas the marked tendency of the human race to attribute supernatural power to certain inanimate objects, which, in the primitive stage, are used to avert or influence the power of the dead or to attain other advantages; and from this has developed the whole wide-spread belief in amulets, and possibly also, in a measure, fetish-worship. We shall consider later how the belief in the power of the amulet may have arisen.
An important force tending towards the continuance and development of superstitious conceptions, when they have once arisen, is of course to be found in the authority of the medicine-men (spirit-exorcisers), or of the priests, over their fellow-men. Some minds, and these the ablest, naturally came to have a better understanding than the others of supernatural things, and to stand in a closer relation to the dead. It was clear that they could thus help their neighbours, when, for example, there was question of applying the powers of the dead to the benefit
