Mr. Lang's mind "broods fondly over" my remark that many expressions rhetorically used by him "convey to our minds reminiscences of Christian teaching of which the savage mind is guiltless." He interprets it as an assertion that, though under European influences, the Australian blackfellows are guiltless of Christian teaching, particularly with regard to Baiame. But it will be observed that the remark was a general protest against Mr. Lang's method of argument, and contained no affirmation respecting any specific race or belief. Hence, he cannot fasten upon me the charge of inconsistency in the mode of dealing with Baiame. My theory about Baiame is one that Mr. Lang quotes again and again, namely, that "the points of his story most resembling the Christian conception of Creator have been unconsciously evolved, first by white explorers, then by missionaries, and lastly by the natives themselves under European influence." Let me give an example of what I mean by the unconscious evolution by white explorers. I will take Mr. Manning's account, which I have had the opportunity of reading since my criticism was written. He was not, perhaps, literally an explorer, but an early settler. I have not space for the whole account, interesting and inportant though it be. Extracts will, however, show how Mr. Manning treated Baiame, or Boyma, as he writes the name. After describing him as "seated on a throne of
among whom the Märchen arose, ever had the lofty conception of the deity held by St. Paul or St. John, or consequently ever degraded it. They were on a different plane of civilisation and of thought from the writers of the New Testament, and I know of no evidence that they hnd ever been on the same plane. This is not at all a parallel case with that of the Australian savages, about whom we are arguing. Being all in a low stage of savagery, they hold "simultaneously quite contradictory conceptions," both sets of beliefs, the "religious" and the "mythical," as Mr. Lang chooses to call them. Which came first, he concedes, is merely "surmise," for it cannot be historically proved. He thinks the "religious," or higher, set came first. That is his surmise—nothing more: and I venture to think the European Märchen yield it no countenance.
