has it in his power both to help and to harm his people, who
pray to him and perform ceremonies in his honour. This
awful being, whose voice is heard in the peal of thunder and
whose dreadful name may not be pronounced in common
life, is not far from godhead; at least he is apparently the
nearest approach to it which the imagination of these rude
savages has been able to conceive. Lastly, as I have pointed
out, the reverence which the Central Australians entertain
for their dead ancestors is closely bound up with their
totemism; they fail to distinguish clearly or at all between
men and their totems, and accordingly the ceremonies which
they perform to commemorate the dead are at the same time
magical rites designed to ensure an abundant supply of food
and of all the other necessaries and conveniences which
savage life requires or admits of; indeed, we may with some
probability conjecture that the magical intention of these
ceremonies is the primary and original one, and that the
commemorative intention is secondary and derivative. If
that could be proved to be so (which is hardly to be ex-
pected), we should be obliged to conclude that in this as
in so many enquiries into the remote human past we detect
evidence of an Age of Magic preceding anything that deserves
to be dignified with the name of religion.

That ends what I have to say at present as to the belief
in immortality and the worship of the dead among the
Central Australian aborigines. In my next lecture I pro-
pose to pursue the enquiry among the other tribes of
Australia.

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