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LECTURE III.
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If we turn from Africa to America, we find there in the North numerous languages as witnesses of ancient migrations, but of ancient religion we have hardly anything. In the South we kriow of two linguistic and political centres; and there, in Mexico and Peru, we meet with curious, though not always trustworthy, traditions of an ancient and well-established system of religious faith and worship.
Lastly, as it is possible to reconstruct an original Polynesian language from what is common to the dialects of the islands reaching from America to Africa (Madagascar), fragments of an original Polynesian religion also are gradually brought to light, which would amply repay the labours of a new Humboldt.
The Science of Religion has this advantage over the Science of Language, if advantage it may be called, that in several cases where the latter has materials sufficient to raise problems of the highest importance, but not sufficient for their satisfactory solution, the former has no materials at all that would justify even a mere hypothesis. In many parts of the world where dialects, however degenerate, still allow us a dark glimpse of a distant past, the old temples have completely vanished, and the very names of the ancient deities are clean forgotten. We know nothing, we must be satisfied with knowing nothing, and the true scholar leaves the field which proves all the more attractive to the dabblers in a priori theories.
But even if it were otherwise, the students of religion would, I think, do well to follow the example of Le Page Renouf's Hibbert Lectures' of 1879, 'Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt;' also De Rougé, 'Sur la Religion des anciens Egyptiens,' in Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne,' Nov. 1869.
