Note 160 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
Surely one may indulge a wry smile when told that "heavenly father" and "creator" are no attributes of God, and may be reasonably justified in preferring Sir Richard Schomburgk's judgment, where he says (i. 170): "Almost all stocks of British Guiana are one in their religious convictions, at least in the main; the Creator of the world and of mankind is an infinitely exalted being, but his energy is so occupied in ruling and maintaining the earth that he can give no special care to individual men." This unusual reason for the indifference of the Supreme Being toward the affairs of ordinary men is probably an inference of the author's. Roth commences his study of Guiana Indian beliefs with a chapter entitled, "No Evidence of Belief in a Supreme Being," and begins his discussion with the statement: "Careful investigation forces one to the conclusion that, on the evidence, the native tribes of Guiana had no idea of a Supreme Being in the modern conception of the term," quoting evidence, from Gumilla and others, which to the present writer seems to point in just the opposite direction. Of course, the phrase "in the modern conception of the term" is the key to much difference in judgement. If it means that savages have no conception of a Divine Ens, Esse, Actus Purus, or the like, definable by highly abstract attributes, ça va sans dire; but if the intention is to say that there is no primitive belief in a luminous Sky Father, creator and ruler, good on the whole, though not preoccupied with the small details of earthly and human affairs, such a conclusion is directly opposed to all evidence, early and late, North American and South American, missionary and anthropological. Cf. Mythology of All Races, x, Note 6, and references there given; and, in the present volume, not only Ch. I, iii (Ramon Pane is surely among the earliest), but also—passing over the numerous allusions in descriptions of the pantheons of the more advanced tribes (Chh. II-VII)—Ch. IX, iii (early and late for the low Brazilian tribes); Ch. X, ii, iii, iv.