their necessities compel them; every day they will become more and more useful, and acquire better habits, and finally become truly useful to their country.

Another method of increasing the population, is, by encouraging the immigration of foreigners; it will be very difficult to reap the full benefit accruing from such a measure, whilst the uncertain state of our government does not afford security to either person, or property. Much could be attained under the protection of the colonization laws, and by having societies formed to attend to their first wants upon their arrival. They have many anxieties who leave their native land, ignorant of the laws, customs, usages, religion, and language of the country of their adoption; and it is necessary to remove these fears, by helping them in their first efforts. In the extensive and fertile lands which Tabasco possesses on the banks of the Usumacinta, and on the borders of Chiapas, and Yucatan, far removed from the habitations of men, colonies could be established of immense value to the country.

(To be continued.)

THE ETHNOLOGY OF EASTern Asia anD THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS. By J. R. Logan.*

(Continued from page 25.)

SECT. 2.-Progress from Naturalism or Naturolatry (i. e. the spirituralism and worship of particular natural things) to Pantheism and Monotheism.

THE history of the development of natural religion is the history of the feelings of man towards nature, of his consciousness of his relation to nature, including his fellow men. It therefore necessarily embraces the history of the development of intellect and science. As the object of a feeling varies, so does the feeling itself. Nature is one thing to the mind of a Humboldt, and another to the mind of a savage of the Andamans. The impression left on the one mind by the contemplation of nature is widely different from that left on the other. Where the one sees harmony, serenity and beneficence, the other sees caprice, violence and malignity. The religion of the one is love and awe, that of the other is distrust and fear, often mingled with hate. The emotions wait upon the intellect. True, the whole mind sympathises with every impression made upon it, and an impaired nervous system, by rendering the feelings morbid, clouds the intellect. But in a sound mental and bodily constitution the state of culture of the intellect determines the feelings that dominate in the mind.

In

The scientific observation of nature is the culture of the intellect. the lowest stage of culture the mind is rapid in its deductions. It has no distrust in its own feelings and imaginations. It springs at once from effects to causes. As yet it knows not a state of philosophical

*From the Journal of the Eastern Archipelago, published at Singapore.

reticinence and suspense. It cannot remain in doubt. The ample magazine of forces with which observation and fancy have filled its memory, and which form the body of its knowledge, supplies causes sufficient to account for all phenomena. Every individual action is referred at once to an individual first cause. The idea of secondary causes, and of a sole first cause, has not yet dawned. The divorce between religion and science has not taken place. Science and supernaturalism are one. In the supernaturalism of each tribe is embodied the manner in which nature presented itself as a living reality to the greatest intellects, the spiritual leaders of the tribe. It is by the study of this phasis of ethnic development, the elements of which must be chiefly sought for in a knowledge of the language of each tribe, that the primordial history of the growth of the intellect, science and religion can alone be restored. Every peculiarity in the character of a tribe is imaged in its supernaturalism, for this is not a reality existing without the mind. It is only an attribute of the mind. At every step which the national mind takes in advance of its first position towards nature, a change comes over its supernaturalism, until at last through a higher development of intellect, consequent on a bolder, deeper and more extended observation of nature, the permanence and regularity of all its grand phenomena are clearly perceived, and they are referred to One living will. Thus it is only after struggling through a long series of partial and timid deductions, that the human race arrives at the conviction that there is only one God. Unless miraculously illuminated it cannot attain this belief earlier. It necessarily attains it ultimately unless its intellectual progress be obstructed, and it remains stagnant.

It

The ethnic progress of the mind with relation to supernaturalism is the gradual establishment of harmony between itself and nature, embracing the reconcilement between the selfishness and absolutism of the individual and those of each of his fellows, through the recognition and dominion of the great ethical truths. In the lowest stage the more material minds are possessed by a dull, sensual selfishness, that sees nothing in life but animal wants and the means and obstacles to their gratification. In the more imaginative organisms all nature is still viewed through a medium of selfishness, but of a less sensual kiud. is full of spiritual powers that love or hate mankind, and work him good or ill. Far from thinking himself the dominant and sole rational being, he sees in the measureless earth many beings and powers surpassing him, and full of mystery and vague terror for him, because between his soul and theirs there is no communion. He is a small, naked, feeble biped. A tree, a river, a rock, a mountain, the sea, the wind, lightning and thunder, the sun, the moon, the starry night, nearly all animals, are infinitely greater than he. As yet his spiritual sense only serves to fill him with a consciousness of his own insignificance in nature, with love for what is pleasing and innocuous, awe for all else, and with dark and shapeless images and feelings of nameless dread that crowd on his mind when, in solitude and in the black night, his imagination labours with the ideas of the great and incomprehensible powers, visible and invisible, which environ his existence.

The man of a civilised community living in a eultivated country must beware of measuring the feelings of the wild man towards nature by his own. To the former most terrestrial objects are viewed as subordinated to the power and convenience of himself. The face of the country is parcelled out and carved, the very vegetation that covers it is his, and exists because he wills it, the larger animals are his domestic slaves. Everything has passed under his dominion. But the savage is lost amidst the grandeur and wilderness of nature. Every single tree of the myriads amongst which he wanders, far transcends him in power as in bulk, and the notion of being able to destroy it never crosses his imagination. As yet unarmed with implements, and unconscious of the latent power of the race, the sense of his feebleness constantly attends him, colouring all his observation and all his philosophy. He is one of the weakest animals of the forest. The foot print of the tiger, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the bear fill him with dread. He listens alarmed to every unusual noise. It is in this lowest ethnic stage that naturalism has its greatest sway, and the powerful and deep rooted feelings and beliefs which then originate, long survive the condition of existence in which they take their earliest forms. All gods are then dread realities. No imagination is needed to clothe them with awe. They who have once seen a tiger seize its human prey, and are totally incapable of devising or conceiving any means of protection from a being so terrific, are filled for ever after with feelings towards it which the dread of imaginary demons in other tribes cannot exceed in intensity.

It is not till man has gained courage through art, has learned to conquer other powers by his implements, his arms, his observation and his intellect, that he can view nature imperturbed and unblinded by his personal feelings. It is not till he has raised himself victoriously above his selfishness, and stands god-like on the serene height of pure intellect, that the scales fall from his eyes and he first sees the world as it really is, and understands the true position of his race. That which in the microscopic vision of each man's individuality, abounds in evils, antagonisms and perplexity, when viewed through the race is straightway resolved into harmony and unity. But this highest truth has also two forms dependent on the character of the mind. In the one, supernaturalism is vanished altogether, and nature is self-developed and purely physical. There is matter and nothing else. Organism is a property of matter, mind a property of organism. In the other, every thing is harmonised by the belief in a single spiritual unity. God exists and nothing else. This idea often emerges with great slowness from the forms of the primitive naturalism, and there is a conflict between the notion of an absolute and immutable spiritual power, and the old notions according to which the events which bring us good or ill were special acts of benevolent, irate or malignant gods.

The reconciliation is attempted by the belief that natural laws and forces, although God-created, yet, when created, have a certain existence external to God, and that he can and does specially direct them according to his feeling towards individual men. Left to itself nature would not fully work his will, but would sometimes oppose it. Hence he inter

feres miraculously to protect and benefit some men, and cause suffering or death to others. But to the mind differently cultured the notion of the possibility of any antagonism whatever between the laws of nature and God is a contradiction in terms. Such notions are allied to the extramundane conception of God. An idea of an opposite kind identifies him with matter. A more advanced belief is that God is not matter, nor is matter external to him: He works and reveals himself in matter. Whether matter has any existence save as a vesture or manifestation of spirit, is a question which human science is inadequate to solve. But we see that all matter is constantly imbued with certain forces and properties, and that it is by the action of these that God manifests himself in the wonderful forms of organised nature. If we refer life and its organisms to God, the physical properties of matter, which evince the same intention and will, and matter itself, which we only know through its properties, must also be mere shows of the Spirit. Although the earth is a unity, not only physically, but in its organic phenomena, matter with its physical properties alone cannot convince the mind of God, because all matter is at all times instinct with these properties.

Where there is universal uniformity, reason cannot conclude that it ever has been, or ever can be, otherwise. But when we look up from the dead physical level of matter, every organic being appears as a special miracle, disturbing the order of nature. Physical and chemical properties are of the essence of matter. In them matter is, and it is inconceivable without them. But every organic being is limited in time and space. The material world is neither lessened nor increased by it. Take it away and matter remains as before. It is not matter, but an invisible miraculous force that animates and shapes it for a time, and then lays it down. It is not the result of the inherent and universal forces of matter, a necessary form of matter. In its adaptation of matter, and to matter it exhibits intellect, will and power, and this is especially shewn in the harmony and consistency which pervade the multitude of allied types, and forms of the same type, presented by the organisms which cover the surface of the earth as with a perpetual effloresence. Matter does not spontaneously take organic form and vitality, nor can any combinations of matter by the highest natural intellect produce conditions under which matter exhibits will and organism. Man cannot cause matter to take life, much less can matter vivify itself. Wherever, therefore, we see an organic being we see a sole universal spirit working and revealing itself in matter. Without speculating on the intention of nature, this great fact is very plain, that man sees in nature a Spirit whose action is a perpetual material self development in a vast, and apparently boundless, variety of organic forms that array the earth in a living garment of every colour, shape and texture. The gradual change that is taking place, especially in and through the highest organism, man, shews that individuals and even races are but evanescent forms, no ways necessary to the Spirit, and which it lays aside after a time. Before the single organism man, most of the larger land animals will probably pass NO. 2.-VOL. XX.

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away. Thus the organism of the earth is a slowly changing and growing development of the Spirit. Individuals perpetually perish. Races have vanished and are progressing to annihilation. But as yet the human race, the most perfect and most powerful mundane incarnation, advances; and we cannot conclude from nature that it will not be immortal.

It is certain, that the advance of science does not render spiritualism more uniform. The ethnic character of the mind of the human race, can never attain fixity. It must change for ever, and so must all its forms, external and internal. Monotheism is as many coloured as naturalism. Hitherto it has fluctuated chiefly between two extremes, the one, that the universe is the necessary and eternal body of the Spirit, and the other, that the Spirit is a metaphysical abstraction of human faculties transcendant and infinite. The more abstract and metaphysical or subjective races and minds have tended to the latter conception; the more objective and sensuous to the former, or to other material notions. Between them lie many forms of monotheism, such as the following.-All creation is an emanation of the Deity, and is reabsorbed in him. The succession of phenomena, and even of universes, is but the endless pulsation of his life. They have no reality in themselves, but are mere apparitions. Or, the universe has an external reality, but as it arose at his word, so will it vanish and leave not a wreck behind. The active life of the Deity is in the universe, in its forms and motions he works and delights. He dwells apart in a material Heaven, and thence controls and directs the events of the world, either immediately or by subordinate spirits. Such are a few of the aspects under which the Deity appears to the monotheistic intellect. Those that have most influenced the Ethnology of Eastern Asia and the islands, will be considered in the section on Monotheism.

The only safe and broad division of natural religions or supersensual beliefs is, into those which are scientific and those which are not. It is only in the lowest tribes, that we can correctly speak of the religion of a race as a unity. Whenever scientific minds have arisen in a race, the religious beliefs cease to be uniform. In most, if not all European nations at this moment, every kind of spiritualism may be found, from the purest and truest, down to superstitions as gross as any which prevail in the Indian Archipelago. Whole classes of men belonging to the most civilized races, still cherish naturalism under christian forms, or blend the lower with the higher faith in a mode of which we have many examples in the mixed religions of Eastern Asia. A man's religion it is evident must always depend on the character of his mind. By scientific minds, I mean minds which, from nature or culture, are thoroughly imbued with the first principle of all spiritual truth, renunciation of self. From this comes faith in God, and in nature, as God revealed in action. From this come freedom from human authority and prejudices, and a rooted conviction that to every mind truth exists only so far as it has observed nature in a spirit of reverence and humility, and that all notions of God not directly derived from the observation of