Primitive Religions. A religion is not dualistic simply
because it admits the existence of good and evil spirits.
In animism both good and evil spirits are still con-
sidered to belong to the same genus. They all belong
to the forces of nature that can be both good and bad:
good in certain respects and bad in other respects, good
in certain circumstances and bad in other circum-
stances. These powers are concerned with what serves
or injures them rather than with good for the sake of
good or evil for the sake of evil.
Certain so-called primitive religions recognize a
supreme spirit, a great God, and certain among them
represent this God as the principal but not the only
creator of the world. According to stories that are
found among the North American Indians and in cen-
tral and north Asia, a second being intervened in the
creation and caused the institution of death. The world
had been created all good, without evil or death, but
this second being (who is either an adversary or a
clumsy collaborator of the supreme God) did something
malicious or stupid which led to irreparable harm.
These stories seem to express the astonishment of man
in the presence of evil and death, and the tendency
to believe that these do not belong to the essence of
things but are rather the result of an accident which
cannot be due to the supreme deity. A germ of dualism
resides in that idea. But nowhere is the independent
origin of the second being positively expressed; some-
times he is a creature of the good god, sometimes
nothing is said of his origin.
