Note 54 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 124. Andrew Lang (in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor) holds that this Australian view comes not from ignorance but from the desire to assign a worthy origin to man in distinction from the lower animals. Some tribes in North Queensland think that the latter have not souls, and are born by sexual union, but the human soul, they say, can come only from a spiritual being. Decision on this question must await further information.