Fetichism in West Africa. Robert Hamill Nassau

a once happy period, and of a coming time of good; but he knew of nothing corresponding to the story of Cain and Abel;

      That there is a fable that a woman brought to the people of her village the fruit of a forbidden tree. In order to hide it she swallowed it; and she became possessed of an evil spirit, which was the beginning of witchcraft; That there was some tradition of a Deluge (he was not aware of any about the Dispersion at the Tower of Babel);

      That all men believed they were sinners, but that they knew of no remedy for sin;

      That sacrifices are made constantly, their object being to appease the spirits and avert their anger;

      That many of the tribes are, and probably all, before they emerged on the seacoast, were cannibal (of the origin of cannibalism he did not know, but he was certain it had no religious idea associated with it[10]);

      That there was a legend that a “Son” of God, by name Ilongo ja Anyambe, was to come and deliver mankind from trouble and give them happiness; but as he had not as yet come, the heathen were no longer expecting him;

      That there was a division of time, six months, making an “upuma,” or year, and a rest day, which came two days after the new moon, and was called Buhwa bwa Mandanda,—it was a day for dancing and feasting;

      That the dead were usually buried; but persons held in superstitious reverence, as twins, Udinge, etc., were not buried, but left at the foot of a ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, or other sacred tree;

      That burial-places are regarded with a mixed feeling of reverence and awe;

      That the immortality of the soul is believed in, but that there is no tradition of the resurrection of the body;

      That they believe God gave law to mankind, and that, for those who keep this law, there is reserved in the future a “good place,” and for the bad a “bad place,” but no definite ideas about what that “good” or that “bad” will be, or as to the locality of those places;

      That they believe in a distinction of spirits,—that some are demons, as in the old days of demoniacal possession, this distinction following the Jewish idea of diaboloi and daimonai.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      POLYTHEISM—IDOLATRY

      Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace. Whatever is really best in the ethics of civilization is derived from religion. If civilization falls backward, religion probably has already weakened or will also fall. The converse is not necessarily true. Religion may halt or even retrograde, while civilization steps on brilliantly, as it did in Greece with her Parthenon, and in Rome the while that religion added to the number of idols in the pantheon. Egypt, too, had her men learned in astronomy, who built splendid palaces and hundred-pillared Thebes the while they were worshipping Osiris. The dwellers before the Deluge had carried their civilization to a knowledge of arts now lost, while their wickedness and utter wanderings from God’s worship caused the earth to cry out for a cleansing Flood.

      Whatever therefore may be true in the history of civilization—whether man was gifted, ab initio, with a large measure of useful knowledge which he had simply easily to put into practice; or whether, as a savage, primitive man had slowly and painfully to find out under pressure the use of fire, clothing, weapons of defence and offence, tools, and other necessary articles and arts—is not important here to be discussed. From whatever point of vantage, high or low, Adam’s sons started, we know that they had at least tools for agriculture[11] and for the building of houses;[12] and that a few generations later, their knowledge of arts had grown from those which aided in the acquisition of the bare necessaries of life into the aesthetics of music and metallic ornamentation.[13]

      But religion did not wait that length of time for its growth. To the original pair in Eden, Jehovah had given a knowledge of Himself. They felt His character, they were told His will; and when they had disobeyed that will, they were given a promise of salvation, and were instructed in certain given rites of worship, e. g., offerings and sacrifice. They knew[14] the significance of atoning blood, and the difference between a simple thank-offering and a sin-offering. All this knowledge of religion was not a possession which man had attained by slow degrees. He started with it in full possession, while yet he was clothed only in the skins of beasts,[15] and before he knew how to make musical instruments or to fashion brass and iron. His religion was in advance of his civilization. Subsequently his civilization pushed ahead.

      What were the gradual steps before the Deluge, in the divergence of man’s worship of God, is not difficult to imagine if we look at the history of the Chaldees, of the Hittites, and of the Jews themselves. Subsequent to the Deluge, from the grateful sacrifice of the seventh animal by Noah, to Abraham’s typical offering of Isaac, it is not a very far cry to the butchery of Jephthah’s daughter or the immolations to Moloch. A well-intended Ed[16] may readily become a schismatic Mecca. An altar of Dan is soon furnished with its golden calf.

      With this as a starting-point, viz., that the knowledge of himself was directly imparted to man by Jehovah, and that certain forms of worship were originally directed and sanctioned by Him, I wish in subsequent pages to follow that line of light through the labyrinths of man’s wandering from monotheism into polytheism, idolatry, and even into crass fetichism.

      Abstract faith is difficult. It is so much easier to believe what we see, to have faith assisted by sight. Even such faith is not without its blessing, but “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”[17] Memory is assisted by visible signs; whence the art of writing,—in its usefulness so far beyond the Indian’s wampum belts. Merely oral law is apt to be forgotten, or its requisitions and prohibitions become hazy.

      As the years passed by, and nations, after the dispersion from the tower on the plain of Shinar, diverged more and more, not only in speech and writing but also in customs, their religious thought began to vary from the simple standard of Adam and Noah. Between those small beginnings of variation and the gulf-like depth of the fetich, there are three successive steps.

      First, retaining the name of and belief in and worship of Jehovah, mankind added something else. They associated with Jehovah certain natural objects. This, it is readily conceivable, they could do without feeling that they were dishonoring Him. They could not see Him; in their expression of their wants in prayer they were speaking into vague space and heard no audible response. The strain on simple unassisted faith was heavy. The senses asked for something on which they could lean. Very reasonable, therefore, it was for the pious thought, in speaking to the Great Invisible, to associate closely with His name the great natural objects in which His character was revealed or illustrated the,—sun, shining in strength and beneficently giving life to plants and the comfort of its warmth to all creation; the moon, benefiting in a similar though less prominent way; the sky, from which spake the thunder; the mountain, towering in its solemn majesty; the sea, spread out in its inscrutable immensity. All these illustrating some of Jehovah’s attributes,—His power, goodness, infinity,—without impropriety associated themselves in man’s thought of God, were named along with His name, and were looked upon with some of the same reverence which was accorded to Him. In all this there was no conscious departure from the worship of the one living and true God. The position to which these great natural objects were gradually elevated relatively to God, in the thought of the worshipper, was not as yet blasphemous, or in any intentional way derogatory to Him. But the evil in this elevation of nature into prominence with God was that there was no limit to the number of objects or the degree of their elevation. From the dignified use of sun, moon, sky, and sea, by unconscious degradations animals became the objects of worship—the bull, the serpent, and the cat (each illustrative of some attribute), and thence finally objects that were frivolous, ridiculous, or disgusting, which nevertheless were each the exponent of some principle. Even the indecencies of Phallic worship had found their dignified beginning in an attempt to honor the great principle of life in nature’s procreative processes.

      But there