Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-21
THE GOD OF TARZAN +:
The God of Tarzan


father in the little cabin by the
land-locked harbor, Tarzan of the
Apes found many things to puzzle
his young head. By much labor ant
through the medium of infinite pa.
tience as well, he had, without as.
sistance, discovered the purpose OF
the little bugs which ran riot upor
the printed pages. He had learned
that in the many combinations in
which he found them they spoke ir
a silent language, spoke in a strange
tongue, spoke of wonderful things
which a little ape-boy could not by
any chance fully understand, arous.
ing his curiosity, stimulating his
imagination and filling his soul with
a mighty longing for further knowl.
edge.
There were, of course, certain
words which aroused his curiosity tc
a greater extent than others, words
which, for one reason or another, ex.
cited his imagination. There was
one, for example, the meaning of
which was rather difficult to grasp
1t was the word God. Tarzan first
had been attracted to it by the fact
that it was very short and that il
commenced with larger g-bug than
those about it-a male g-bug it was
to Tarzan, the lower-case letters be-
ing females. Another fact which at
tracted him to this word was the
number of he-bugs which figured in
its defnition-Supreme Deity, Gre
ator or Upholder of the Universe
This must be very important word
indeed, he would have to look into
it, and he did, though it still baffled
him after many months of thought
and study.
But of the meaning of God he was
yet in doubt Once he thought he
had grasped it-that God was a
mighty chieftain, king of all the
Mangani. He was not quite sure,
however, since that would mean that
God was mightier than Tarzan-a
point which Tarzan Of the Apes, who
acknowledged no equal in the jungle,
was loath to concede.
But in all the books he had there
was no picture of God, though he
found much to confirm his belief that
God was a great, an all-powerful in
dividual. He saw pictures of places
where God was worshiped; but never
any sign of God. Finally ne began
to wonder if God were not of a diff
ferent form than he, and at last he
determined to set out in search of
Him.
He commenced by questioning
Mumga, who was very old and had
seen many strange things in her
long life; but Mumga being an ape,
had a faculty for recalling the
trivial. That time when Gunto mis-
took a sting bug for an edible beetle
had made more impression upon
Mumga than all the innumerab.e
manifestations Of the greatness of
God which she had witnessed, and
which, of course, she had not under
stood.
Numgo, overhearing Tarzan's
questions, managed to wrest his at
tention long enough from the diver
sion of flea hunting to advance the
theory that the power which made
the lightning and the rain and the
thunder came from Goro, the moon.
He knew this, he said, because the
Dum-Dum always was danced in the
light of Goro. This reasoning,
though entirely satisfactory to Num-
go and Mumga, failed fully to con-
vince Tarzan. However, it gave him
a basis for further investigation
along new line. He would inves-
tigate the moon.
That night he clambered to the
loftiest pinnacle of the tallest jungle
giant. The moon was full, a great,
glorious, equatorial moon. The ape
man, upright upon slender, sway
ing limb, raised his bronzed face to
the silver orb. Now that he had
clambered to the highest point with
in his reach, he discovered, to his
surprise, that Goro, was as far away
as when he viewed him from the
ground. He thought that Goro was
attempting to elude him.
"Come, Goro!" he cried, "Tarzan
of the Apes will not harm you!" But
still the moon held aloof.
"Tell me-" he continued, "if you be
the great king who sends Ara, the
lightning; who makes the great
noise and the mighty winds, and
sends the waters down upon the
jungle people when the days are
dark and it is cold. Tell me, Goro,
are you God!"
Thus it was an imposing word
which Tarzan made of God. The
masculine prefix of. the apes is bu,
the feminine mu; g Tarzan had
named la, o he pronounced tu, and d
was mo. So the word God evolved
itself Bulamutumumo, or, in English,
he-g-she -o-she-d.
Similarly he had arrived at a
strange and wonderful spelling Of
his own name. Tarzan is derived
from the two ape words tar and zan,
meaning white skin. 1t was given