Division BL24 SO 
 Sect/'.", . 8-2S£>4 
 
1 
 
 
 ■V 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 \ 
 
 https://archive.org/details/religionoflowerrOOsmit 
 
THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 As Illustrated by the 
 
 AFRICAN BANTU 
 
THE WORLD’S LIVING RELIGIONS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 FRANK KNIGHT SANDERS 
 
 AND 
 
 HARLAN PAGE BEACH 
 
 A series of concise yet reliable presentations of the 
 actual religious life of the non-Christian peoples of 
 today and of Christianity’s approach to them 
 
 VOLUMES 
 
 The Religion op Lower Races as Illustrated by the African 
 Bantu (now ready) 
 
 Primitive Religion in Southeastern Asia 
 Hinduism in the Life of India 
 
 Buddhism and Buddhists in Southern Asia (now ready) 
 
 Foism and the Buddhists of China (in preparation) 
 
 Present Day Buddhism in Japan 
 Present Day Confucianism 
 Islam and Its Followers 
 
 Roman Christianity in Latin America (in preparation) 
 Christianity and the World Religions 
 
THE RELIGIO 
 LOWER RAC 
 
 As Illustrated by the 
 
 AFRICAN BANTU 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN W. SMITH 
 
 Sometime missionary in Northern Rhodesia; cmthor of “A Hand¬ 
 book of the Ila Language,” etc.; chief-translator of the 
 Ila New Testament; co-author of “The Ila-speaking 
 Peoples of Northern Rhodesia”; Fellow of 
 the Royal Anthropological Insti¬ 
 tute of Great Britain . 
 
 /|5rto Sort 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1923 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 Copyright, 1923, 
 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published May, 1923. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
The Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign 
 Missions Conference of North America has authorized the 
 publication of this series with the usual understanding 
 that the author of each volume is responsible for the 
 opinions expressed, unless otherwise stated. 
 

i 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This little volume is one of a series on “The World’s 
 Living Religions,” projected in 1920 by a committee of 
 the Board of Missionary Preparation of North America, 
 and intended to furnish accurate and trustworthy, though 
 brief and popular presentations of the actual religious life 
 of each great region of the non-Christian world. Its 
 purpose is to give to students of religion in the West and 
 particularly to missionary candidates who are planning 
 to go to Africa, or to other portions of the world where 
 primitive peoples are living, and to all who are interested 
 to know such peoples more intimately, a vivid conception 
 of the religious conditions which exist in such an area and 
 some understanding of the hold of the prevailing religion 
 upon those who follow it. 
 
 In a true sense these hooks seek to enable a reader to 
 think in terms of a devotee of a strange religion, to ap¬ 
 preciate his point of view with some sympathy, and thus 
 become able to consider his religious problems helpfully. 
 The series aims to be impressionistic rather than educa¬ 
 tional, and to alford a clear picture of the religion in 
 question as it works out in its normal social setting. The 
 editors have not sought to provide a thoroughly scientific 
 discussion of each religion. For such an approach the 
 literature referred to in the Appendix makes ample 
 provision. 
 
 The writer of this volume was for seventeen years a 
 
 missionary of the Primitive Methodist Church in Africa 
 
 • • 
 vn 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 and spent most of that time as a pioneer in Northern Rho¬ 
 desia. He reduced the Ila language to writing, prepared 
 its grammar and dictionary, translated most of the New 
 Testament into a popular version and wrote books for 
 Ila use in the schools. With a colleague, A. M. Dale, he 
 has published an exhaustive study of the Ila-speaking 
 Bantu peoples, already recognized as a contribution of 
 great value. Born in South Africa, the son of a mis¬ 
 sionary, his life-long study of the Bantu peoples has 
 amply qualified him by a rich experience to interpret their 
 social and religious life. In his judgment the readers of 
 this series will best be served by a clear and adequate ex¬ 
 hibit of the religious life of one group of peoples of lower 
 religious culture in preference to a general study of folk 
 religion. With this judgment the editors are in full 
 sympathy. 
 
 There are good reasons for choosing the African Bantu 
 to represent the other peoples of a similar grade of cul¬ 
 ture. Among these reasons is the importance of Africa as 
 a mission field. European politicians have long recog¬ 
 nized the strategic character of that continent from their 
 point of view. The economic value of the land that was 
 once regarded as chiefly desert is more and more realized 
 today. Nor in the politics of the Kingdom of God is 
 Africa of any less importance. It may be that the final 
 conflict between the Cross and the Crescent will be deter¬ 
 mined there. Certainly the struggle will be a hard one. 
 From every point of view it is of the highest import that 
 the pagan Bantu of Central and Southern Africa should 
 be Christianized before Mohammedan propaganda spreads 
 further. Hence the importance of thoroughly knowing 
 the religious ideas of these peoples and of being able to 
 approach them on the right lines. Moslem missionaries 
 have a great advantage over Christian missionaries in be- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 ing culturally nearer the people whom they seek to con¬ 
 vert. To bridge the gulf between the graduate of a West¬ 
 ern university and the pagan African is no easy matter; 
 it cannot be bridged at all unless those who are trained 
 amidst Christian surroundings make a strong and sympa¬ 
 thetic effort to understand the African point of view in 
 the matters that most concern them and him. Hence the 
 emphasis which we would put upon the necessity of an 
 introduction of this sort to Bantu religious ideas. 
 
 It is true beyond cavil that the area covered by the 
 Bantu-speaking peoples presents a wide variation in cul¬ 
 tural features,—customs, habits, manufactures and be¬ 
 liefs,—yet there is, nevertheless, a fair basis for an inter¬ 
 pretation (such as this volume offers) which aims to state 
 what is generally true. The Bantu peoples do form a 
 reasonably distinctive group, yet they also represent the 
 average negro type. As they live, act, think and wor¬ 
 ship, so in the main do other primitive peoples in Africa. 
 
 The round of religious ideas and practices which the 
 Bantu exhibit finds many parallels among primitive peo¬ 
 ples everywhere. Another volume of the series will treat 
 specifically the religious ideas of such peoples in South¬ 
 eastern Asia, yet one who is going among primitive peo¬ 
 ple anywhere will find this volume of great assistance in 
 the task of understanding them. 
 
 It is our hope that this uniquely fresh contribution to 
 the understanding of the present day religion of primitive 
 people in Africa may be found helpful to a large circle of 
 readers. 
 
 The Editors. 
 
 New York City 
 
 March > 1923 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction.1-4 
 
 1. The Wide Distribution of Elementary Reli¬ 
 
 gion ..2, 3 
 
 2. The Bantu Religion an Adequate Exhibit . 3, 4 
 
 II. The Bantu Peoples of Africa.5-8 
 
 1. The Origin of the Bantu.5, 6 
 
 2. Their Social Organization and Culture . . 6,7 ‘~- 
 
 3. The Spirit in Which the Race Should Be 
 
 Studied.7,8 
 
 III. The Basis of Faith in Bantu Religion . . . 9-21 
 
 1. They Believe in a Universal Energy . . . 9,10 
 
 2. The Secret of Its Manipulation . . . . 10,11 
 
 3. Its Application to Actual Life.11-21 
 
 (a) In medicinal remedies.11 
 
 (b) In charms which give luck .... 11 
 
 (c) In fetishes with their reputed spiritual 
 
 power.12 
 
 ( d ) In the practice of witchcraft ... 14 
 
 (e) In the tabu which forbids .... 17 
 
 (/) These practices do not lack moral value 19 
 
 IY. The Complex Conception of Personality . .22-27 
 
 1. The Vital Principle Exists Apart from the 
 
 Body.22-24 
 
 (a) It is transmissible.22 
 
 (b) It is focussed in various organs . . 23 
 
 (c) It is separable.23 
 
 2. A Murdered Man and Certain Slain Animals 
 
 Have an Aura or “Nuru”.24 
 
 3. One’s Name is a Part of His Being ... 24 
 
 xi 
 
Xll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 4. The Dead Often Return to be Reborn . 26 
 
 5. Even One’s Shadow Belongs to His Person¬ 
 
 ality .26, 27 
 
 Y. The Survival of the Personality .28-32 
 
 1. A Funeral in Pagan Africa.28,29 
 
 2. The Killing of Cattle and Slaves at Funerals30, 31 
 
 3. The Destination of the Departed .... 33 
 
 VI. The Cult of the Dead.33-48 
 
 1. The Relation of the Living to the Dead . 33-35 
 
 2. The Four Grades of Ancestral Spirits . .35-38 
 
 (a) The tutelary genius.36 
 
 (/;) The family divinities.37 
 
 (c) The communal and tribal divinities . 38 
 
 3. Communion with the Divinities .... 38-43 
 
 (a) They often come in dreams . . . . 39 
 
 (b) They appear in the forms of animals . 39 
 
 (c) They cause sickness.40 
 
 (d ) They speak through mediums and 
 
 prophets.40 
 
 (e) They take up their abode in certain 
 
 objects.42 
 
 4. Sacred Localities Associated with the Divini¬ 
 
 ties .43 
 
 5. Prayers and Offerings to the Divinities . . 44-48 
 
 VII. Nature Spirits.49-51 
 
 VIII. Tribal Divinities Passing over into Gods . . . 52-53 
 
 IX. The Bantu Conception of the Supreme Being . 54-64 
 
 1. It Plays an Unproductive Part in Bantu Life 54-56 
 
 2. The Three Most Common Names for God and 
 
 Their Meanings.56-61 
 
 (a) God is intimately associated with the 
 
 sky and what comes from it . 58 
 
 ( b ) God is the creator.59 
 
 (c) God is the determiner of destiny . . 59 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 (d) Yet there is some idea of God as be¬ 
 
 nevolent .59 
 
 (e) Morality is ascribed to God ... 60 
 
 (/) God is a person.60 
 
 3. Their Groping after God.61, 62 
 
 4. Origin and Value of the Idea.62-64 
 
 X. The Christian Approach to the Bantu . . . 65-75 
 
 1. Aspects of Bantu Religious Life .... 65-68 
 
 (a) It is real.65 
 
 (b) Yet it is a religion of fear .... 66 
 
 (c) It is doomed to pass away .... 66 ^ 
 
 2. The Future of the Bantu Race .... 69 
 
 3. What Christianity will do for the Bantu . 69-71 
 
 (a) It will make them sure of God ... 69 
 
 ( b ) It will moralize their whole life . . 69 
 
 (c) It will liberate them from their fears . 70 
 
 ( d ) It will make for a healthy and pro¬ 
 gressive individuality.70 
 
 4. The Acquisition of Experience by the 
 
 Friendly Student of the Bantu . . . 72-75 
 
 (a) Take pains to understand the view¬ 
 
 point of the people.72 
 
 ( b ) Cultivate friendly relations with them 72 
 
 (c) Master the language of the people . 72 
 
 (d) Cultivate tact and patience ... 73 
 
 ( e ) Make accurate and full records . . 73 
 
 (/) Treat local customs and ideas with re¬ 
 spect .74 
 
 ( g ) Seek for points of contact .... 74 7 
 
 ( h ) In conclusion.75 
 
THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 

 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 t 
 
 ) 
 
THE RELIGION OF LOWER 
 
 RACES 
 
 As Illustrated by the 
 
 AFRICAN BANTU 
 I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The writer was once on a visit to a Bantu chief in 
 Africa who long had been unfriendly to the Mission, 
 but who that day showed unmistakable signs of a chang¬ 
 ing attitude. When he arose to leave, the chief insisted 
 upon accompanying him a part of the way. As they 
 walked along side by side, he felt the chief insinuating 
 something into his hand. Glancing around to see that 
 they were not observed the chief said: “Do not look at this 
 now, but wear it always.” “What is it?” the missionary 
 asked. “It is a very powerful and very precious talis¬ 
 man, the secret of which cost me ten cows,” the chief 
 replied. “It will ensure that everybody with whom you 
 come into contact will love you!” The gift was accepted 
 in the spirit in which it was offered and with warm 
 thanks. On later examination the talisman was found to 
 be a bracelet composed of a roll of snakeskin enclosing 
 varied drugs. 
 
 Now one may ask: What has this to do with religion ? 
 There are plenty of people in America and Europe, good 
 Christians, too, who will wear a lucky-token on their 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 watch chain, or avoid the number thirteen, or knock on 
 wood, but we do not call these acts of religion. Were an 
 African to write of our religion and devote one chapter 
 to “The God Luck,” we should be offended. These things 
 belong to the same cycle of ideas as the charms of the sav¬ 
 age; with us, however, they are a mere relic of a former 
 system of belief, a “survival,” a superstition. In Africa 
 today they do not represent mere superstition; they are 
 part and parcel of the faith by which people live and by 
 which they act. 
 
 Religion, in its lowest as in its highest forms, begins 
 in an act of trust. Faith is essential to it, faith in the ex¬ 
 istence and working of supersensible power, faith which 
 springs from the pressure of human needs, faith which 
 moulds and shapes as well the life of the individual as that 
 of the social organism. The African has a more complete 
 trust in what lies behind his charms than many of us 
 have in the providence of God. Faith in that power which 
 works in and through an amulet or a talisman may be a 
 low form of faith, but it is faith. The one who seeks to 
 come into helpful religious relationship or even contact 
 with people must not treat this trust as a superstition to 
 be ignored or condemned. It is rather a pathway along 
 which may come the realization of a higher form of faith. 
 
 The Bantu of Africa are a human unit in this ele¬ 
 mentary stage of religious development. A study of their 
 religious ideas will not only serve to exhibit the religious 
 experience of the negro, but will also illustrate the gen¬ 
 eral characteristics of the religious life of all peoples of 
 the lower culture. 
 
 1 . The Wide Distribution of Elementary Religion 
 
 A large section of the human race is still in an ele¬ 
 mentary stage of development religiously or else it re- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 3 
 
 tains elements of an earlier cult in connection with its 
 own present more stately worship. The native peoples of 
 Africa, of the island world, of Northern Asia, of secluded 
 portions of India and of the aboriginal American conti¬ 
 nent still retain the religious impress of primitive areas. 
 Millions of the followers of Buddha, of Mohammed, of 
 Confucius and of the officially recognized gods of India 
 cherish practices which are but survivals of those of an 
 earlier time, before their ancestors adopted these more 
 highly organized religious cults. Even Christianity, as 
 we know it, reveals traces of such survivals. 
 
 2. The Bantu Religion an Adequate Exhibit 
 
 In the great historical and flourishing religions of to¬ 
 day these survivals are ignored as matters of purely 
 private interest or concern, or else are regarded as super¬ 
 stitions unworthy of attention. To gain a clear sight of 
 elementary religious ideas in full control of life one must 
 turn to undeveloped peoples like the negroes of Africa. 
 Of these the Bantu afford a typical religious exhibit, since 
 they represent the African at his best. 
 
 It is no easy task to produce a satisfying survey of 
 Bantu religion. Of very few tribes is there available any 
 adequate first-hand description; of most of them scarcely 
 anything is really known. The information available is 
 scattered through many books and articles written by mis¬ 
 sionaries, government officials and travelers. The account 
 of the salient features of Bantu religion that follows will 
 serve as a starting point for further study. It is quite 
 possible that the writer’s long experience with a few par¬ 
 ticular tribes has, in some points, led him astray in at¬ 
 tempting a composite picture. It need only be said that 
 he has been aware of the possibility and has tried to 
 avoid it, giving to the best of his knowledge and belief a 
 
4 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 true account of the religion as a whole. In order to give 
 a proper setting to this picture it will be necessary first to 
 note a few facts regarding the Bantu peoples and their 
 history. 
 
II 
 
 THE BANTU PEOPLES OF AFRICA 
 
 The word “Bantu” simply means “people” or “the 
 people.” It applies to a negroid people divided into 
 many groups, numbering about fifty millions. If one 
 should draw a line diagonally across the map of Africa 
 from the mouth of the Rio-del-Rey in the Gulf of Guinea 
 to the mouth of the Tana River on the east coast, slightly 
 below the equator, the territory of the Bantu would be 
 south of the line. The Bantu differ from the true negroes 
 found north of this line, in that they have a strain 
 of Hamitic (and probably of Elamitic) blood in their 
 veins. 
 
 1. The Origin of the Bantu 
 
 In ancient times Bantu Africa was in all probability 
 inhabited by black peoples of a lower type; in the distant 
 south, beyond the Zambesi River, lived nomadic Bush¬ 
 men. Not far from the third or fourth century B. C., let 
 us say about the time of Camillus, the founder of historic 
 Rome, of Demosthenes, of Cyrus and of Nehemiah, the 
 ancestors of the Bantu swept south from their original 
 home, somewhere in the neighborhood of the great equa¬ 
 torial lakes, 1 overrunning in the course of centuries the 
 
 1 Johnston now holds that these lakes (or the Bahr-al-Ghazal) 
 were a secondary focus of distribution for the Bantu, its earliest 
 area of development being in Eastern Nigeria. Comparative Study 
 of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages, Vol. II, pp. xii, 14. 
 
 5 
 
6 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 southern part of the continent, except the southwest corner, 
 where the Hottentots and Bushmen continued to live. 
 They took with them cattle, domestic fowls and imple¬ 
 ments of iron, and either exterminated, or more generally 
 absorbed, the previous inhabitants. While the modern 
 Bantu have much in common, they are not homogeneous 
 either in culture or in physical appearance. This fact 
 must be accounted for by the varying degrees of their 
 mixture with the aboriginals and by the influence of di¬ 
 verse climatic conditions. Their languages, however, over 
 three hundred of which are known, constitute a clearly 
 marked family of speech, while there is a sufficient like¬ 
 ness of religious ideas to make possible and to justify 
 such a sketch as the following. 
 
 2. Their Social Organization and Culture 
 
 In order to show the quality of the Bantu peoples, it 
 will be well to give a brief account of their industrial and 
 social life. 1 The Bantu are not savages. Wherever the 
 country is adapted to the purpose, they possess great herds 
 of cattle and are agriculturists. Their staple foods in the 
 east country are milk and millet and maize; and, in the 
 west, yams, plantains and manioc (cassava). Their gen¬ 
 eral type of dwelling is the cylindrical hut with a conical 
 roof of grass; in the southeast one finds bee-hive huts 
 and in the west rectangular buildings with ridged roofs. 
 Iron is worked almost universally by them, and copper 
 too, where it exists. The art of preparing bark-fibre 
 cloth is practiced by many tribes, while wood-carving and 
 basketry are very general. They have no interest or skill 
 in working with stone. They represent a fine average 
 negro type. 
 
 1 For a very complete and fascinating study of a Bantu group, 
 the Ba-ila of Northern Rhodesia, see Smith and Dale’s The Ila- 
 Speaking Peoples, etc. (Bibliography No. 20). 
 
BANTU PEOPLES OF AFRICA 
 
 7 
 
 The social organization varies to some extent with the 
 climatic conditions. Almost everywhere the social unit 
 is the village, made up of families and ruled by a head¬ 
 man, a number of villages forming a group ruled by a 
 chief. In the open country where communication is easy, 
 nations have sprung into existence under kings. In the 
 historic past extensive, even if ephemeral, “empires” have 
 been formed by such conquering chiefs as Msidi, Chaka 
 and Sebitwane. Most of the Bantu tribes show some 
 trace of totemism; that is to say, they are or were at one 
 time divided into clans, each bearing the name of some 
 animal, plant or object, such as the “Elephants,” the 
 “Grasshoppers” or the “Baobabs.” The Prime Minister 
 of Uganda, we are told, is a “Grasshopper” and uses a 
 seal with the legend “Always forward.” The members 
 of a clan are united by close ties of comradeship. Mar¬ 
 riage within the clan is not allowed, i.e., an Elephant 
 must not marry an Elephant. The clan name descends 
 in general through the mother, not the father. 1 These are 
 original features of totemism, which, however, are now 
 rarely found in their purity. But generally throughout 
 Africa the clan pays great respect to its totem, i.e., the 
 animal or other object from which it takes its name. 
 Totemism is often treated as a religion, sometimes as if 
 it were the most primitive form of religion, but in Africa 
 today it has hardly any, if any, religious significance; its 
 importance is wholly social. 
 
 3. The Spirit in Which the Race Should Be Studied 
 
 Before proceeding further, let us stop a moment and 
 try to bring these peoples before our mental vision. Travel 
 
 1 All clans were matrilineal originally. There are some, however, 
 which have become patrilineal. In these marriage within the clan 
 is regarded as desirable, only surpassed by marriage into the 
 mother’s clan. 
 
8 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 in imagination up the great rivers, through the dense 
 forests, over the wide undulating savannahs. Try to 
 catch some of the notes of the still sad music of Africa’s 
 humanity. Fifty millions of people, living and dying! 
 They have black or chocolate skins; in many respects they 
 are separated from ourselves by vast chasms; but they 
 are human, composed of flesh and blood and soul as we 
 are. If you prick them they bleed; if you tickle them 
 they laugh, as we do. Grief and joy touch the same 
 chords of their hearts as of our own. In their veins surge 
 our own pitiful passions. They, with us, have pondered 
 ' the dark enigmas of human life, the mystery of the great 
 universe around, and they, too, have been disturbed by a 
 sense of something interfused, 
 
 . il Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
 And the round ocean and the living air . 99 
 
 In the course of this study we shall meet with much 
 that may seem revolting because of its foolishness, cruelty 
 and degradation, but let us go on in the spirit of sym¬ 
 pathy, remembering that we are all pupils in God’s great 
 school and that if, by His grace, we are in the higher 
 class, it is not for us to despise those who are in the 
 kindergarten. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 
 
 1. They Believe in a Universal Energy 
 
 The anecdote related in the opening paragraph shows 
 clearly one type of faith which the Bantu possess. When, 
 we think ourselves back into their minds we realize that, 
 while they recognize a more or less personal Supreme Be¬ 
 ing and recognize, too, personal spiritual beings of a 
 lower grade, they expend a very large proportion of their 
 religious feeling on a power that is impersonal. Ona of 
 the technical names given to their belief is dynamism, the 
 belief in an Energy or Potence which is immanent in all 
 things, something as intangible and all-pervasive as the 
 ether. It is everywhere, it flows through all things, but 
 it draws itself to a node or focus in certain conspicuous 
 objects. In itself it has no moral quality, but it can be 
 tapped and turned to good use or bad according to the 
 intention of the user. Not everybody, however, can 
 manipulate it; its use must be fenced in by many pre¬ 
 cautions, for it is dangerous, just as electricity may be 
 dangerous to those who do not understand how to use it. 
 It is akin to the Mana of the Melanesians and other Pacific 
 islanders, the Orenda and Watan of the red Indians. 
 
 In trying to understand this conception which seems to 
 underlie all Bantu belief and practice, it is helpful to re¬ 
 call the modem doctrine of energy as one of the funda¬ 
 mental physical existences. In one of its potential forms 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 energy lies dormant in all matter, associated with its ulti¬ 
 mate atoms, and giving no indication of its presence. Not 
 only is it, as everybody knows, in coal and guncotton, it 
 lies hidden also in the very paving stones of our streets. 
 It is boundless and inexhaustible, if only we knew how 
 to harness it to our needs,—knew how, that is to say, to 
 transform potential into kinetic energy, the energy of 
 burning coal, , or of the electric charge, or of moving 
 electrons. 
 
 Thoughtful Bantu would echo Carlyle,—w T ho when he 
 said “force” meant “energy”: “Force, Force, everywhere 
 Force! We ourselves a mysterious Force. ...” They 
 too see in all things a kind of potential energy, which be¬ 
 comes kinetic or active in the talismans and amulets to 
 which they commit their fate. 
 
 It would not do to say that any African to whom one 
 talks would be able to express his belief in such words 
 as the above. The African feels rather than formulates. 
 He has not expressed his belief in set terms; it lies im¬ 
 plicit in all his doings, yet probably he could not give a 
 name for the Potence. He does not, in a word, make a 
 creed of his belief in this energy; he acts upon it. His 
 religion consists very largely in getting this power to work 
 for his benefit and in avoiding that which would bring 
 him into violent and harmful contact with it. 
 
 2. The Secret of Its Manipulation 
 
 The most important individuals in the Bantu commu¬ 
 nity are the doctors and the diviners because they are be¬ 
 lieved to hold the secret of harnessing this mysterious 
 energy. They have to pass through a ritual of initiation 
 before they can practice, a training which is often long 
 and severe. The doctor must learn the secret of the plants 
 and other objects in which, so to speak, the all-pervasive 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 11 
 
 energy has come to a head for the curing of disease or for 
 the making of amulets and talismans. He learns darker 
 mysteries, too,—the drugs in which the power is present 
 to blight and to destroy. The diviner seeks to discover 
 or learn how the secrets of nature may be employed for 
 the discovery of human secrets, in order that he may de¬ 
 tect thieves, warlocks, 1 witches and other criminals. 
 
 3. Its Application to Actual Life 
 
 In countless ways this energy is applied to the needs of 
 every-day life. 
 
 (a) In Medicinal Remedies .—Undoubtedly the Bantu 
 have learned many secrets of nature. The doctors know 
 the therapeutic qualities of many plants; they know emet¬ 
 ics, for example, and they know poisons. They believe 
 they know more than they really do know. They have dis¬ 
 covered the power that lies in what we call “suggestion.” 
 You would laugh at many of their supposed remedies; 
 some of their concoctions are as repulsive as the witches’ 
 broth of which we read in “Macbeth.” You would feel 
 inclined to say to them: It is ridiculous to think that 
 such things can work the wondrous effects you imagine! 
 Their reply might be: Yes, the thing itself appears ab¬ 
 surd, but the essence of it is a particular manifestation of 
 the world-energy, and that essence performs the wonders. 
 
 (b) In Charms Which Give Luck .—What has just been 
 .said applies particularly to the charms which the doc¬ 
 tor makes and sells to his patients. They are of two 
 kinds: talismans which bring good luck and transmit 
 qualities; and amulets which ward off ills of various 
 kinds. They are all treated very seriously. The faith 
 reposed in them is absolute. As used they constitute a 
 
 1 An archaic word, again coming into use to designate a male 
 sorcerer. 
 
12 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 system of insurance. Instead of taking out an insurance 
 policy against the risk of having his hut destroyed by 
 lightning, for example, a man will buy an amulet for 
 this purpose from the doctor. Charms are worn upon the 
 person; they are suspended from the roof in the house 
 or hung up outside; they are attached to tools and instru¬ 
 ments. The writer has been asked many times to give 
 _.men a charm for their guns, so that they might always 
 shoot straight; others have begged him for a charm for 
 their eyes so that they might be able to read books, for 
 they have a firm conviction that skill is derived from tal¬ 
 ismans. When they put iron ore into their smelting- 
 kilns they must add a charm, for without it no iron would 
 be forthcoming, however hot the furnace might be. One 
 charm will keep off witchcraft; another will turn people 
 back who are on the way to kill you. Others will make 
 you invisible to the foe in battle; others will render you 
 impervious to his spears. There is a useful talisman 
 which makes your accuser in the law-court forget the 
 charge that he intended to bring against you, and another 
 which both stimulates your own wits so that you put your 
 case convincingly and makes your opponents stupid so 
 that they lose their action. One charm will turn you into 
 a wild beast when you die; another will transform you 
 into a destructive ghost, so that you may come back and 
 .haunt those who were unkind to you in this life. In 
 short, there are charms to meet almost every conceivable 
 .condition or desire. 
 
 (c) In Fetishes with Their Reputed Spiritual Poiver.— 
 What we have been considering is dynamism, the belief 
 in a mysterious hidden impersonal force which can be 
 tapped and put to the use of men. Nowhere has it been 
 stated that these charms convey the power of supernatural 
 beings. If anything like a spirit has to do with the value 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU KELIGION 13 
 
 of the charm, the name given to the practice is no longer 
 dynamism but fetishism, which has been defined as “the 
 doctrine of spirits embodied in or attached to, or convey¬ 
 ing influence through, certain material objects.” Fetishism 
 is found in certain parts of Africa,—in the Congo terri¬ 
 tory and in Uganda, for example. The people there have 
 the usual charms already described, but they also have 
 other kinds with which spirits, mostly the spirits of the, . 
 departed, are associated. There may be little outwardly 
 to distinguish fetishes from charms; but a fetish is a 
 charm with a plus, and the plus is the spirit attached to 
 it. 1 Whether the spirit dwells within the fetish, or only' 
 is attached to it in some way, is not always clear; but cer¬ 
 tainly the fetish would lose most, if not all its power, were 
 the spirit to leave it. The fetish in West Africa of fen 
 takes the form of a hideous carved wooden image. When 
 a warrior is away on a campaign it is his wife’s duty, to 
 offer prayers and beer to the fetish in the house in order 
 to keep the spirit in a good temper. Should the warrior 
 be killed or wounded in battle, everybody would be con¬ 
 vinced that the woman had not done her duty and that 
 the spirit had withdrawn his power from the protecting 
 fetish in consequence, and she would be held responsible 
 for her husband’s mishap. In Uganda some fetishes have 
 temples erected for them, each with its attendant priest 
 and a medium through whom the spirit attached to the 
 fetish makes his will known to the people. Some fetishes 
 have a woman in attendance who is regarded as the wife 
 of the spirit. A former king of Uganda had a great fetish 
 which lived in a temple where malefactors were taken to 
 be tried; none of them ever returned alive, for the fetish- 
 
 1 Others regard all spirits as personal. The distinction they draw 
 between charms and fetishes is that the former are instinct with 
 the spirit of things and the latter with disembodied human 
 spirits. [Ed.] 
 
14 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 ghost speaking through his medium invariably con¬ 
 demned them; they were slain there kneeling before the 
 fetish and the report would be spread that they died of 
 fright on being cpnvicted by the fetish. 
 
 ( d ) In the Practice of Witchcraft. —Witchcraft, the 
 darkest terror of the.African’s life, is intimately associ¬ 
 ated with his belief in dynamism, for it is in virtue of 
 the mysterious power manifest in drugs that the witch 
 and warlock act, or are supposed to act. The drugs which 
 they get from the doctors bestow upon them a kind of 
 directive energy,—the Ba-ila name it inzuikizhi ,—which 
 enables them to act upon people over a distance. They 
 work in various ways. The simplest act of bewitchery is 
 to point with the index finger in the direction of a person 
 while thinking, or mumbling, a desire for his death. 
 Christian preachers have sometimes got themselves into 
 fearful trouble by innocently emphasizing some point in 
 their sermon by shaking an index finger in the face of 
 the congregation. They have been charged with bewitch¬ 
 ing their hearers! Another way is to stab the footprint 
 of a person; the victim will be found bleeding to death. 
 Or some hair or nail-clippings which get into the war¬ 
 lock’s possession give him the necessary hold upon the 
 person. Or, having marked out his victim, the w’arlock 
 contrives to get some third person to give him food. This 
 may be some ordinary article of diet, but, when it is swal¬ 
 lowed, it becomes a snake or a beetle in the throat or 
 stomach of the victim. It is not necessarv even to do this; 
 the warlock, while eating at home, may simply direct his 
 occult power in his enemy’s direction and, if he too is eat¬ 
 ing at the same moment, his food will make him ill. The 
 witch can send a crocodile or lion or snake to attack her 
 victim or she can turn herself into one of those animals 
 and do the deed herself. She mav obtain human flesh, 
 
 v 7 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 15 
 
 boil it, mix some herbs with the gravy and sprinkle it in 
 the field of the man whom she wishes to kill; then all who 
 
 i ' 
 
 partake of the grain growing in the field will die. More¬ 
 over, witches and warlocks have the weird power of un¬ 
 sheathing their personality. Leaving their body lying on 
 the bed at home, they wander off in the night, enter some 
 person’s house through the roof and consume his vitality, 
 so that while he may appear to be alive for a few days 
 longer, he has really ceased to exist and very shortly aft¬ 
 erwards dies in earnest. Such a person often becomes the 
 warlock’s familiar; that is to say, in the ghostly state he 
 is in the service of the warlock who sends him on em¬ 
 bassies of death and destruction. The familiar may go in 
 the form of a little sprite,—or the warlock himself as¬ 
 sumes this form,—enters through the roof and sits on a 
 beam, where it gibbers and chirps, to the terror of the 
 person lying in the room who often dies of fright or goes 
 mad. 
 
 Witches and wizards, naturally, do not perform their 
 devil tricks in the open, but in secret; indeed some peo¬ 
 ples in Africa believe that the warlock is not conscious of, 
 his own doings but performs them, as it were, in his sleep. 
 It becomes necessary, therefore, to take measures to dis¬ 
 cover them and put a stop to their crimes. In some parts 
 of Africa it was the custom, and perhaps still is, to have 
 a periodical cleaning-up. Picture the scene,—under the 
 tropical stars, in a village surrounded by dense forest 
 whence comes at intervals the cry of some wandering wild 
 beast. The people are all assembled. They pass in file, 
 one by one, before the doctor who administers to each a 
 portion of some horrible brew. It is done with intense 
 solemnity, under conditions calculated to impress the 
 minds of all. Indeed some are overpowered and scream 
 out a confession of witchcraft before ever passing the doc- 
 
16 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 tor. The “medicine,” which all are required to take, is 
 supposed to intoxicate only those who are mixed up with 
 witchcraft. Presently here and there in the crowd a man 
 or woman is observed whose legs totter or whose head 
 wobbles, and they are borne off to death amid loud 
 acclamation. 
 
 Of course, people are on the watch in every community 
 for suspicious characters. Whenever any one dies in an 
 unaccountable manner, some unfortunate person is sure 
 to he accused of causing his death. Indeed, it is a wide¬ 
 spread belief in Africa that nobody dies what we call a 
 natural death; all such deaths are due to witchcraft. Sus¬ 
 pected persons are haled before the diviner, who by vir¬ 
 tue of occult powers acquired through drugs, is able, by 
 many methods, to detect the guilty one. If there is any 
 doubt about it, the suspect will be forced to go through 
 the ordeal, or will himself volunteer to go through it. He 
 will have to pick stones out of a big pot of boiling water; 
 and if his arm shows any sign of blistering he will he held 
 guilty. Or he will be made to swallow a kind of poison. 
 If he dies under it, or if it purges him, he is guilty; if 
 he vomits or shows no sign, he is pronounced innocent. 
 Warlocks and witches of this description are shown no 
 mercy, for theirs is the most heinous crime known to the 
 African. It is the crime of murder or, at least, of caus¬ 
 ing sickness and misfortune out of malice. Civilized gov¬ 
 ernments, acting on the belief that there is no such thing 
 as witchcraft, do their utmost to put down the practice of 
 tracing and punishing witches. To the African this is 
 the sheerest of follies. It is as if one were to decree 
 that murderers, or at any rate some murderers, were not 
 to he sought out and condemned. We cannot wonder that, 
 believing as they do, Africans treat witches and war- 
 locks so cruelly. They are clubbed, or hanged, or impaled, 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 17 
 
 or drowned, or flayed while still conscious and cut up into 
 pieces and burnt, or, while alive, they are laid on a pile 
 of wood and burnt to death, or they are pegged down in 
 the path of the warrior-ants which torment, kill and leave 
 the bones white in the sun. 
 
 All this has been narrated as matter of fact and as if 
 there were no supposition about it. To the Bantu there 
 is no supposition. They are as convinced that the witch 
 and warlock work in the ways described as we are con¬ 
 vinced about our own existence. The conviction colors 
 their whole life. Just try to imagine what life must he 
 under such conditions! Where any unoffending person 
 may at any time be accused of causing sickness and death, 
 where every one suspects his fellow, and where all live in 
 such incessant fear of unknown enemies, life, one would 
 think, is hardly worth living. The diviners are often ras¬ 
 cals who for gain or to maintain their prestige denounce 
 people who never had the slightest wish to dabble in the 
 occult. Dr. Bentley tells of a woman witch who on retir¬ 
 ing from business confessed that she had denounced two 
 hundred people, the majority of whom she knew to have 
 been innocent. Myriads of innocent persons have been 
 hurried to a shameful and cruel death. Millions of people 
 have lived beneath the shadow of this terrible belief for 
 centuries. It is a greater curse to Africa than ever the 
 slave-trade was. Who can measure its baneful effect in 
 preventing the progress of the Bantu? Men simply do 
 not dare to be more industrious and to accumulate more 
 wealth than their fellows; they dare not show great skill; 
 they do not venture out upon new paths of progress, for 
 fear they will be condemned by public opinion of being 
 concerned with witchcraft. 
 
 (e) In the Tabu Which Forbids .—Another thing in the 
 life of the Bantu, intimately associated with dynamism, 
 
18 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 is the extensive system of tabu which regulates individual 
 and social conduct. Sometimes in our streets and facto¬ 
 ries we see a prominently displayed notice: 
 
 DEATH !! ! 
 
 DO NOT TOUCH THIS WIRE!!! 
 
 That is what the Bantu mean when they forbid the doing 
 or saying of certain things; they are issuing a danger sig¬ 
 nal; they are labeling the deeds and words as danger¬ 
 ous, tabu. We do not mean that every prohibition is to 
 he classed as a tabu. The Bantu have a host of laws, 
 the infringement of which is punished by the chief and 
 elders of the village. The peculiarity of a true tabu is 
 that the offender is not punished by his fellows; the evil 
 consequence follows the act as inevitably as a shock fol¬ 
 lows upon touching a live wire. By doing certain things 
 or by saying certain words, a man presses the trigger 
 which releases the hidden mysterious energies of which we 
 have previously spoken, and they at once react against 
 him. It is not easy for a civilized person to realize the 
 tremendous part that tabu plays in the life of the Bantu. 
 From the cradle to the grave they are hedged round by 
 “dont’s.” The prohibitions comprise not only many things 
 that we ourselves recognize to be contrary to the moral law, 
 but also, and much more, many things that to us seem to 
 have nothing to do with ethics. We, for example, are not 
 guided by conscience in matters of food; some things 
 disgust us, other things make us ill, others are not ac¬ 
 cording to our taste, hence we refrain from eating them; 
 but we do not consider our action as a matter of right 
 and wrong. We have learned the Master’s lesson that 
 there is nothing from without the man that going into 
 him can defile him—that is to say, is tabu—but the things 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 19 
 
 which proceed out of the man are those that defile him; 
 “this He said making all meats clean.” It is different 
 with the Bantu. It is tabu to eat this and tabu to eat 
 that; if you eat you will inevitably suffer. Some of these 
 tabus are ordered by the doctor; he may prohibit some¬ 
 thing to a child who thereafter, either for life or until he 
 grows up, may not eat the thing named. One child, for 
 example, may not eat hippopotamus flesh; if he eats it, 
 he will become a leper. Another may not eat the great 
 ezunda frog, or his eyes would swell and become big like 
 the frog’s. Likewise there are tabus applicable only to 
 women. Girls and young married women may not eat the 
 hare, the porcupine and the monkey; should they break 
 this rule their children would be like those animals. It 
 would be unprofitable to enumerate all the things, other 
 than foods, that may he tabu; the point to remember is 
 that by eating certain things, by saying certain words, by 
 doing certain actions, a man may liberate the mysterious 
 world-energy surrounding him with fatal consequences 
 to himself and to his neighbors. Persons in certain con¬ 
 ditions, and things put to certain uses, thereby come into 
 intimate contact with this unknown power and are there¬ 
 fore in a state of tabu. It is as if at certain times the sep¬ 
 arating medium between it and men become attenuated,— 
 the insulating rubber, so to speak, gets worn off the live 
 wire,—and people then enter into intimate relation with 
 its mysterious working. Death is the great cause that 
 brings men into this dangerous position and therefore 
 mourners, widows, widowers, warriors home from battle, 
 are all in a state of tahu. As such they have to go through 
 elaborate rites of purification, before they can resume 
 their normal life in the community. 
 
 (/) These Practices do not Lack Moral Value .—This 
 all very well illustrates the distinction we are accustomed 
 
20 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 to draw between a moral and a ceremonial law; and it is a 
 sign of weakness in ethical discrimination on the part of 
 the Bantu when they rate a breach of ceremonial a greater 
 offence than a breach of the moral law. They so often 
 call a thing bad that really has no ethical quality at all, 
 while many actions that are really bad they pass over with 
 little or no censure. At the same time it must be recog¬ 
 nized that this tabu-belief has been a good training and 
 preparation for the time when the Bantu should have the 
 higher morality taught them. We may call it morality 
 of a low grade, but it is better than none. Many of the 
 actions that the highest ethics condemns are condemned 
 by the tabu-morality, not for the same reasons, not for the 
 best reasons, but still condemned. Incest is tabu, some 
 kinds of homicide are tabu, suicide is tabu. These of¬ 
 fences may he committed very largely within a tribe, but 
 the people believe they cannot be committed with im¬ 
 punity. Among many Bantu tribes, for example, if a 
 man kills his mother, although he is not brought before 
 the chief and sentenced to capital punishment he does not 
 escape; his penalty is more awful than any human tribunal 
 can inflict. That mysterious underlying world-energy 
 reacts against him in the form of a curse. To Anglo- 
 Saxons a curse is little more than “words, words, words” 
 that cannot have any serious effect upon one; the Bantu 
 believe that a curse is charged with some of the mys¬ 
 terious potency of which we have spoken, and especially 
 the curse pronounced by a near relation. Nor is it neces¬ 
 sary that a curse be declared; if one does anything to a 
 parent that might call down his or her curse, the conse¬ 
 quences will follow. The matricide is never safe; go 
 where he will, do what he may, vengeance dogs his steps 
 and on any day may overtake him; sooner or later he 
 will come to a miserable end. 
 
BASIS OF FAITH IN BANTU RELIGION 21 
 
 So then this belief is not without some considerable in¬ 
 fluence for good upon the people. We may hardly like to 
 call dynamism a religion, but it certainly is a belief that 
 makes for righteousness in some directions. 
 
IV 
 
 THE COMPLEX CONCEPTION OF 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 Let us now advance another step in our study, from 
 dynamism to animism, from forces affecting a man from 
 without to those which develop within himself. In order 
 that what follows may be intelligible, we must first con¬ 
 sider the ideas of the Bantu in regard to the human soul. 
 The Bantu believe not only in the mysterious impersonal 
 potency with which we have been dealing hitherto; they 
 believe in pyschic beings, intelligent, purposeful, personal 
 powers, that may be associated for a time with material 
 things, yet have a distinct and separate life of their own. 
 This is animism. The Bantu seem to think that in man 
 both this potency and these powers are in operation; 
 hence their conception of the human personality is a very 
 complex one. The subject is a very difficult one to make 
 clear, but perhaps some aspects of it may be set forth in 
 the limited space available. 
 
 1. The Vital Principle Exists Apart from the Body 
 
 ( a ) It is Transmissible .—Let us begin with the fact 
 that the Zulus and other Bantu eat the flesh of long-lived 
 animals in order that they themselves may live longer. 
 Evidently the world-energy assumes the form of longevity 
 in those animals and by consuming their flesh men can 
 transfer that energy to themselves. It is only a step from 
 that to eating the flesh of men in order to assimilate the 
 
 22 
 
COMPLEX CONCEPTION OF PERSONALITY 23 
 
 world-energy which takes the form of strength and valor 
 in them. We are here at the root of the cannibalism prac¬ 
 ticed by so many Bantu tribes. In many other tribes 
 where cannibalism is not the general custom, and where it 
 may even be regarded with the utmost horror, warriors 
 nevertheless, will, as part of the ritual of victory, eat the 
 heart and liver and other organs of a brave enemy slain in 
 battle in order to absorb his courage, wisdom and per¬ 
 severance. In fact, the flesh and blood of an enemy killed 
 in battle make the most efficacious of all charms, one that 
 is put to a great many uses:—seed is smeared with it to 
 ensure a good harvest, hunters inoculate themselves with 
 it to give them skill, and so on. 
 
 ( b ) It is Focussed in Various Organs .—In the liver the 
 vital principle is found as patience, in the spleen as 
 hatred, in the heart as intellect and will, in the chest as 
 intelligence and eloquence, in the diaphragm as con¬ 
 science. The Bantu to a large extent personalize these or¬ 
 gans: “My heart leads me/’ they say; “My chest told 
 me.” They often ascribe what we should call the vital 
 processes to curious quasi-personal creatures that are sup¬ 
 posed to live in the organs. In the ear there is one whose 
 function is to hear and secrete wax; in the bony protu¬ 
 berance behind the ear there is another associated with 
 taste; and some Bantu account for the processes of repro¬ 
 duction by the working of similar creatures. They re¬ 
 ceive personal names and are spoken of as if they were 
 self-acting individuals. 
 
 (c) It is Separable .—Many of the Bantu believe that 
 the vital principle can be removed from the body and 
 placed for safety in some secure spot. A man will go to 
 a doctor and tell him that he is anxious thus to safeguard 
 his life. The doctor will, in return for a handsome fee, 
 apply to him a very powerful charm which will abstract 
 
24 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 his life and put it, say, in a palm tree or in another 
 man’s eye,—wherever the patient may wish. Henceforth 
 a very close connection subsists between the two. Should 
 the palm tree fall, or should the other man have his eye 
 destroyed, at the same instant the man would die. Should, 
 on the other hand, another person, by virtue of some more 
 powerful charm, succeed in killing the man, at the same 
 moment the palm would fall or the other man’s eye would 
 burst, and people would thus discover what they did not 
 know before, where the man’s life had been hid. Among 
 some tribes a cultivated plant of some kind is planted be¬ 
 hind the house when a child is born, and thenceforth 
 carefully tended, for it is believed that were it to wither 
 away the child would die. These are instances of what 
 has been named “the external soul.” 
 
 2. A Murdered Man and Certain Slain Animals Have an 
 
 Aura or “Nuru” 
 
 Many of the Bantu believe that there is another ele¬ 
 ment in man; the Ba-thonga name it the nuru. It is a 
 kind of aura or influence that emanates from the body of 
 a murdered man and also from the corpses of certain large 
 animals such as the eland. It may remain attached for a 
 long time to the skull of a man who was murdered and 
 never buried. The murderer, the hunter, the warrior, or 
 he who interferes with the skull, may, unless he is 
 promptly medicated with drugs by the doctor, be driven 
 into insanity by the nuru. This is not the ghost of the 
 man or animal; it is something else that lies dormant in 
 the living person and remains with the corpse. 
 
 3. One's Name Is a Part of His Being 
 
 We are coming to see that the constitution of man is, 
 in the opinion of the Bantu, very complex. And we must 
 
COMPLEX CONCEPTION OF PEPSONALITY 25 
 
 not omit to notice that they regard a person’s name as also 
 a part of his personality. The name is not a mere label. 
 If one asks an unsophisticated native to give his name, he 
 will look very confused and will either turn to some by¬ 
 stander and ask him to reply, or he will make up a fic¬ 
 titious name, or he will repeat one of his nicknames 
 which have not the sacred character that his real name 
 has. It is tabu for him to pronounce his name. Neither 
 a person nor a thing is precisely the same without a name 
 as with it. We do not err if we say that the name is part 
 of the man’s personality. This is an idea quite foreign 
 to westerners, but we can easily understand how the un¬ 
 tutored Bantu reach this conclusion. When you pro¬ 
 nounce a name what happens? You produce a sound; 
 in other words, vibrations which impinge upon the ear¬ 
 drum of another; it is as if something has gone out from 
 you which enters into another person. The Bantu know 
 nothing about air-waves, but they are sure that when they 
 utter their name something goes out from themselves that 
 is an intimate part of themselves,—some part of their 
 life. When you have their name, you have them. There 
 is a little animal in Africa which some name Chinao; 
 they also call it “that-which-may-not-be-named-bv-chil- 
 dren.” It is said to be subject to periodical fits. If one 
 names it in a child’s presence, or if the child names it, the 
 name, so the people say, enters the child and makes it epi¬ 
 leptic, just as the animal is itself epileptic. From the 
 point of view of the Chinao, one might say that the child 
 robs it of something by the act of uttering its name. Simi¬ 
 larly, if a person mentions his true name, he gives away 
 a part of himself. An evilly disposed person can use the 
 name, which is part of him, to the detriment of the 
 whole of him, just as getting hold of a lock of some one’s 
 hair enables an enemy to bewitch him by means of it. 
 
26 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 4. The Dead Often Return to Be Reborn 
 
 The belief of the Bantu in reincarnation is intimately 
 associated with their belief as to names, for the real name 
 which a man hears is the name of the ancestor who is re¬ 
 born in him, a part of the personality that survives many 
 deaths and returns to the earth in many generations. 
 When a child is born in the home the parents are natu¬ 
 rally anxious to ascertain which of the forebears it is who 
 has returned to this world. They bring in the, diviner 
 who says over the names of the various ancestors and di¬ 
 vines from the child’s demeanor which of them the child 
 is; that is to say, the person reborn recognizes his own 
 name and on hearing it gives a sign; naturally, therefore, 
 the child is given the name it bore in a previous sojourn 
 upon earth; and how many soever nicknames he may 
 come to have later in life, this is the real sacred name, 
 part of that ego which persists from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 5. Even One's Shadow Belongs to His Personality 
 
 We have already seen how the warlock and witch are 
 supposed to have the strange power of going out of them¬ 
 selves in order to plague others and how they can also 
 rob a person of his vital essence. It is not only the Bantu 
 magicians who have this last-named power; the foreigner 
 armed with his camera also appears to the unsophisticated 
 African as desirous of making off with some part of him. 
 If one wants to take a photograph of a child, the parents 
 will very likely object strongly. No, they will say, it 
 will take away the child’s shadow, so that he will die. 
 And when you show them pictures of people, dead or 
 alive, on the lantern screen, they are much perturbed, 
 and you may hear them say: “Yes, we knew that he had 
 put their shadows in his box; see, here they are again!” 
 
COMPLEX CONCEPTION OF PERSONALITY 27 
 
 A story is told of a magician who used to exhibit his oc¬ 
 cult powers by telling women to place a big wooden mor¬ 
 tar on his chest and to pound grain in it while he slept; 
 the heavy thumping made no impression upon him; he 
 went on sleeping calmly. On another day, one of the 
 women unintentionally hit his shadow with her pestle and 
 the magician at once awoke with a loud cry; he had all 
 the time been out of his body in his shadow. Many 
 Bantu dislike having any one tread on their shadow or to 
 have their shadow speared. Children are warned not to 
 allow the fire to cast their shadow upon the wall of the 
 house, lest they should die from having seen themselves 
 as a shadow. 
 
 The Bantu, then, it is evident, attach great importance 
 to the shadow of a person. Do they actually believe that 
 the shadow is a part of themselves ? The writer has heard 
 natives strongly deny it, while maintaining some of the 
 prohibitions already alluded to. It would seem rather 
 that they think of the soul as a shadow, because it is as 
 elusive as a shadow, just as they speak of it sometimes as 
 “breath” and “wind,” because it is as intangible and mys¬ 
 terious as these. Many people believe that in the Bantu 
 conception a person has two or three or more souls. It 
 may be that this is the correct view to take; but it will be 
 sufficient for us here to view these four elements of per¬ 
 sonality,—the vital principle, the nuru, the name and 
 the shadow,—as phases of that inner mysterious life 
 which they recognize, but which they, no more than our¬ 
 selves, have yet come to understand. 
 
 The time inevitably arrives when this mysterious per¬ 
 sonality of ours undergoes a change. Death comes and 
 separates the material body from the spiritual; the body 
 decays, but the man himself survives. That death is not 
 the end of all is the firm belief of the Bantu. 
 
V 
 
 THE SURVIVAL OF THE PERSONALITY 
 
 The funeral customs of the Bantu make it clear that 
 they, like us, assume that personality continues after 
 death. 
 
 1. A Funeral in Pagan Africa 
 
 No one who has attended a funeral in heathen Africa 
 will ever forget it. It is one of the saddest, most pathetic 
 scenes on earth. The corpse, with some exceptions, is 
 buried either in the hut, or in the cattle-kraal or out in 
 the forest away from the village. Some corpses are 
 eaten, some are burnt, some are cast to the wild beasts; 
 but interment in the soil is the general rule among the 
 Bantu. The body is often elaborately anointed and 
 clothed. Among some tribes it is embalmed and kept for 
 a long time before being buried, but generally the burial 
 follows quickly upon death. Crowds of people flock to 
 the funeral, the men dressed as for war. The real mourn¬ 
 ers are very sincere and demonstrative in their grief; as 
 long as the mourning ceremonies last they neither wash 
 nor shave, they wear old tattered rags and present a most 
 miserable appearance. The writer recalls the figure made 
 by one of his friends, an important chief, at the funeral of 
 a relative. He was coated from head to foot with white 
 ashes and wore the scantiest bit of cloth around his loins, 
 With a broken stick in one hand and a wildebeest tail, 
 
 28 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE PERSONALITY 
 
 29 
 
 containing “medicine,” in the other, he was wandering 
 about disconsolately alone. As he stood, with his long 
 thin shanks and wizened body, gesticulating with the tail 
 and shouting as if expostulating with death, he presented 
 a most pathetic figure. Every now and then he would 
 flop down, wallow in the dust and throw ashes over him¬ 
 self. When after a time he came over to speak to me, 
 the old man was quite exhausted. At the same time 
 there were three old women sitting together, the picture 
 of grief, their arms around each other. A son, a lad of 
 fourteen, was lying on an ash heap, his body shaking 
 with sobs. On the grave four of the deceased man’s 
 wives were lying as if lifeless. There was no doubt as to 
 the reality of the grief of these mourners. Of others, 
 since they seemed rather to welcome a funeral as an oc¬ 
 casion for feasting, there is more reason to doubt. But 
 while the Bantu grieve, as we in our quieter fashion 
 grieve when a friend or relative leaves us, they no more 
 than we believe that the dead are extinct. Many things 
 done by them at a funeral show this clearly. Before the 
 grave is filled up, members of the family kneel around 
 it and place various things upon the corpse—a calabash of 
 beer or milk, some seeds, a pipe and a lump of tobacco. 
 The corpse has already been wrapped up in skins and 
 blankets. This is all done in the belief that the deceased 
 will require these things in the other world; he takes 
 them, or rather the immaterial counterparts of them, 
 whither he goes. Finally they bid him farewell: “Good¬ 
 bye ! Do not forget us! See, we have given you tobacco 
 to smoke and food to eat! A good journey to you! Tell 
 old friends who died before you that you left us living 
 well!” The wake may be kept up for a month, and per¬ 
 haps a year elapses before the obsequies are finally 
 concluded. 
 
30 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 2. The Killing of Cattle and Slaves at Funerals 
 
 As a rule many cattle are killed during a funeral. In 
 the part of Africa where the writer lived longest, as many 
 as a hundred would be killed and consumed during the 
 period of mourning for an important person. It was the 
 ambition of every man to accumulate as many fine bul¬ 
 locks as he could acquire to be killed and eaten at his 
 own funeral. The idea is not simply to sustain the ener¬ 
 gies of the mourners, but also to provide the deceased 
 with cattle in the other world. More than this, a man, 
 especially a man of consequence, has need, the Bantu 
 argue, of slaves and wives and children to serve and 
 cherish him in the world to which he is going. There is 
 only one way of providing him with them, they must be 
 killed. This line of thought accounts for one of the cruel- 
 est of all the cruel practices of the Bantu. Dr. Bentley 
 has described the custom as it existed in his time among 
 the Congo people ; he tells us that among the Ba-kuba of 
 the Upper Kasai, on the death of the king or of his sister, 
 the funeral could not take place until three hundred slaves 
 had been killed. He adds: “Some people give the number 
 at one thousand, but three hundred is a safer figure.” Let 
 us follow his blood-curdling description: “In a house near 
 by are ten men, secured in forked sticks and firmly tied; 
 they are to accompany him (i.e., the deceased). Among 
 the weeping wives are three or four designated to attend 
 upon him in the spirit world; which is kept a secret as 
 yet, and the life of none of the wives is sure. . . . When 
 all is ready, the body is brought out. The executioner 
 has given the last touch to his huge knife. The crowd 
 gathers in an open space about a strange wooden seat. 
 The unfortunate slaves are brought. One of them is 
 placed in the seat and fastened to it. A tall flexible pole 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE PERSONALITY 
 
 31 
 
 is stuck into the ground at some distance behind the seat. 
 From the top of the pole a cage-like arrangement is sus¬ 
 pended by a cord. The pole is bent down and the cage 
 is fitted to the unfortunate man’s head. He is blind¬ 
 folded, but he knows what is coming, for he has been 
 present before, at like functions, when others were placed 
 on the fatal seat with laughter and much merriment. 
 The executioner commences to dance and make feints; 
 at last, with a fearful yell, he decapitates his victim by 
 one sweep of the huge knife. The pole thus released 
 springs the head into the air. The crowd yells with de¬ 
 light and excitement. The body is unbound and a new 
 victim placed on the seat. The horror is repeated until 
 the ten slaves have rejoined their master. . . . The 
 marked women are seized, four of them; a few blows 
 with a heavy stock suffices to break their arms and legs 
 and they too are placed in the grave, living, but unable 
 to scramble out. The body of their dead lord is then 
 placed upon the groaning women and the earth is filled 
 in.” 1 
 
 In Uganda, too, years ago, when the king, the queen, or 
 the queen-mother died, hundreds of people were slain. 
 The royal wives were placed at intervals around the tomb, 
 were clubbed to death and left there unburied. The 
 Uganda people disapproved of their king visiting the 
 grave of his predecessor more than once, and very natu¬ 
 rally, too, for on such a visit hundreds of people had to be 
 killed to increase the deceased sovereign’s retinue. Simi¬ 
 lar customs are found in other parts of Africa. Some 
 tribes killed a slave and placed him over the tomb in a 
 sitting posture, with a bow in his hand and an upright 
 stake driven through his body. Others,—but enough of 
 these horrors! 
 
 1 Bentley, W. H., Pioneering on the Congo , Vol. I, pp. 254, 255. 
 
32 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 3. The Destination of the Departed 
 
 There would seem to be the same confusion of thought 
 in the mind of the Bantu that there is in many of our 
 minds. We speak of our beloved dead as if they were in 
 heaven, while at the same time many of'us think of them 
 as ever near us. Some among us also naturally cling to 
 the idea that they sleep their last long sleep in God’s 
 acre. So the African will say, in almost the same breath, 
 that the dead have gone to a great village under the earth, 
 where everything is pure and where they till the fields 
 and reap abundant harvests; that they have gone to some 
 far country in the east or north; that they are in the 
 forest surrounding their earthly home; that they are in 
 the house inhabited by the living; that they are wander¬ 
 ing about in the guise of wild animals; that they are in 
 the grave, which is the house of the dead. When we recall 
 the fact that most, if not all, Bantu believe that 
 the dead for the most part return to be reborn, we shall 
 get an idea of what some people call the confusion of 
 thought which characterizes the Bantu; others with per¬ 
 haps equal reason regard it as metaphysical subtlety. 
 
VI 
 
 THE CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 We have now reached the point where we can study 
 the cult of the dead, or, to give it the more usual name, 
 the ancestor worship of the Bantu. We may accept the 
 latter term on the understanding that we are to give the 
 word “worship” a wider meaning than it commonly bears 
 among ourselves. 
 
 1. The Relation of the Living to the Dead 
 
 It is probably correct to say that the attitude of the 
 Bantu towards the departed is a twofold one, founded on 
 a sense of mutual need. In the close community between 
 the living and the dead neither can do without the other. 
 The living need the help of the departed in battling with 
 the evils of their present existence, and on the other hand 
 the departed depend upon the living for much of their 
 well-being. The dead has some power that the living 
 man does not possess, power proceeding largely from the 
 fact that it lives invisible,—seen at any rate only on rare 
 occasions,—and independent of the laws of space and time. 
 Things hidden to the mortal eye are no secret to the de¬ 
 parted. Moreover, they can bring things to pass. If the 
 trees bear a plentiful crop of fruit, if the fields give a good 
 harvest, if sterility falls upon the herds and disease and 
 calamity upon the community, it may be the departed 
 that deserve the credit or the blame. They have the 
 power to bless and to blight. There are other important 
 
 33 
 
34 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 agencies in the universe. There is the mysterious energy 
 working in all things, and there is the Supreme Being 
 above all; but the unseen spirits of men and women too 
 have a real power all their own. Normally they are de¬ 
 voted, or one may suppose them to be devoted, to the inter¬ 
 ests of their family, left harassed and struggling here be¬ 
 low. They know life from the inside,—all its care and 
 pain. They are not, as is the Supreme Being, removed 
 far from men. The attitude of trust would seem, then, 
 the proper one to adopt towards these unseen, powerful, 
 experienced beings. We shall go altogether wrong in 
 our estimate of Bantu religion, if we do not recognize 
 that they really do put their faith in these ancestors, now 
 in the spirit world. The old father and the wise, power¬ 
 ful chief were looked up to with affection and trust while 
 they were living. Now that they have gone into the un¬ 
 seen realm and are wiser and more powerful than ever, 
 they are regarded with so much the more trust. We may 
 find much in the life of the Bantu that alienates our sym¬ 
 pathies; but, here at the heart of it, let us recognize that 
 they worship the best they have known. 
 
 At the same time, in putting off the flesh, the departed 
 have by no means divested themselves of human nature. 
 The best of men are subject to moods; ordinary people 
 are jealous, touchy, fickle; one has to be on his guard 
 not to offend them; for, if angered, they are apt to be¬ 
 come vindictive. So it is with the departed; you can 
 never be quite sure of them. Moreover, powerful as they 
 are, they suffer from cold and thirst, if not from hunger, 
 and need the solicitous attention of their family remain¬ 
 ing on earth. Any omission on its part to supply their 
 needs will be visited on the head of the offending member, 
 or on the head of some one dear to him. In such an event 
 they must be placated by offerings. To some extent it 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 35 
 
 is quite true that fear enters into their worship of their 
 ancestors, the fear of the consequences that will follow 
 any failure in their pious duty. Their real feeling is a 
 mingling of trust and fear; does it not merit the name of 
 reverence, that highly compound emotion which is a blend 
 of wonder, fear, trust, gratitude and subjection? 
 
 Such reverence is certainly paid to the departed who 
 are recognized by the Bantu as at any rate potentially 
 benevolent; hut there are others in the other world who 
 are regarded with unmitigated dread. They are men and 
 women who have departed against their will or who be-^ 
 came embittered by the treatment they received, while* 
 they were still in the flesh. Such spirits are likely to 
 work off their spleen upon the living. These malcontent, 
 malevolent spirits are the ghosts of people who were 
 drowned, or slain by wild beasts, or killed by witchcraft, 
 or who in passion or despair committed suicide. Their 
 funeral rites, perhaps, were not carried out properly; or 
 they were enslaved by some witch or warlock and now 
 have to carry out their master’s behests and plague the 
 living; or they were men and women of a great age who 
 outlived the affections of their family and were neg¬ 
 lected; now, as indeed they threatened to do before they 
 died, they haunt their relatives. These evil spirits are 
 universally believed in throughout Bantu Africa and the 
 belief robs life of much of the joy that might otherwise 
 be experienced. 
 
 2. The Four Grades of Ancestral Spirits 
 
 With some exceptions the Bantu have a common name 
 for the departed who are held in reverence. This name, 
 which is found in slightly different form in the various 
 languages, is Muzimo, plural Mizimo. The best trans¬ 
 lation for the word is “divinity” or “divinities.” Let us 
 
36 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 think of these spirits as graded in four concentric circles. 
 The inmost circle is occupied by a man’s own personal 
 divinity, his tutelary genius; the next is occupied by his 
 family divinities, i.e., the ghosts of his father and mother 
 and other near relatives; the third circle is occupied by 
 the communal divinities, which probably are the ghosts 
 of the family of the head of the village; finally, the out¬ 
 most circle is occupied by the tribal or national divinity 
 or divinities, the ghosts of ancient eminent chiefs. ' Each 
 grade of divinities has its own special constituency. The 
 tutelary genius has nothing to do with any individual 
 other than the one to whom he is attached; the family 
 divinities are concerned with only the members of their 
 own family circles; the communal divinities have only 
 to do with the affairs of the village as a whole and have 
 nothing to do with other communities; and the tribal di¬ 
 vinity has nothing to do with individuals or parties, hut 
 only with the common life of the tribe. 
 
 {a) The Tutelary Genius. —Dr. Nassau, describing the 
 Mpongwe and Benga tribes of West Africa, says that they 
 believe in a life-spirit “vaguely spoken of by some as a 
 component part of the human personality, by others as 
 separate, but closely associated from birth to death.” 1 
 This is a man’s genius, his own private muzimo. How 
 far this belief is common to the Bantu one cannot say, 
 but several writers have called attention to it. The Ba- 
 ila of Northern Bhodesia certainly share in the Mpongwe 
 conception of the genius as a component part of the hu¬ 
 man personality. They, like others, believe that men 
 and women are reborn. A man named Mungalo, for ex¬ 
 ample, will tell you that he is his grandfather, Mungalo, 
 returned to life. At the same time he will tell you that 
 Mungalo is his genius, his guardian spirit ( muzimo ). 
 
 1 Nassau, R. H., Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 64 ff. 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 37 
 
 That is to say, a man’s tutelary genius is the reincarnated 
 spirit within him, the sovereign part of his soul, within 
 him and yet without him, surrounding him, guiding him 
 from birth to death. This is a very subtle conception, 
 not without its own beauty and value. The Ba-ila address 
 the genius as “my namesake.” When one of the tribe is 
 minded to go hunting, he rises early and makes an of¬ 
 fering of fine meal to his genius and prays thus: “My 
 namesake, let us go to the hunt together. Bring the 
 animals near to me and ward off from me all danger. 
 Give me meat today, oh hunter!” As soon as he has 
 killed an animal, he cuts morsels from the liver, the 
 heart, the foreleg and the leg and throws them north, 
 south, east and west, saying as he does so: “Thou in the 
 west . . ., here is meat for you!” Then he does obeisance 
 and claps his hands, while uttering his formula of thanks¬ 
 giving : “Tomorrow and tomorrow, give me meat!” 
 This is a thank offering to the mizimo in general; then 
 he makes another to his own particular genius, saying: 
 “Here is meat, O my namesake! Tomorrow and tomor¬ 
 row may I be even more successful. Be thou continually 
 around me, oh hunter!” Whatever good fortune a man 
 may have, whether it he in gaining wealth or in escaping 
 from danger, he ascribes it in the first instance to his 
 genius. If anything untoward happens to him, he makes 
 an offering to his genius and reproaches him for his neg¬ 
 lect. If he meets with a fatal accident, his friends can 
 only suppose either that the genius was vexed and had 
 abandoned him to his fate, or that some more powerful 
 agency had worsted the genius. 
 
 ( b ) The Family Divinities .—It should be noticed that a 
 distinction is generally made between the divinities per¬ 
 taining to the father and those relating to the mother. In 
 some tribes the latter are given higher regard than the 
 
38 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 former. In a totemistic stage of society the father and 
 mother belong, of course, to different totem clans, and re¬ 
 tain their obligations to their respective clans. The ob¬ 
 ligations of clanship are carried to such an extreme that 
 it would be an offence for the husband to pray to his 
 wife’s family divinities, or for her to pray to his. More 
 curious still, it would be an offence on the part of the 
 mother’s divinities were they to cause the children to be 
 sick. The children belong to the father; the mother’s 
 divinities, while they may assist the father’s in guarding 
 the children, have no right to sicken them. It is within 
 their right to make the wife ill, as the father’s divinities 
 have the right to make him and his children ill; but they 
 must not trespass on each other’s prerogatives. 
 
 (c) The Communal and Tribal Divinities .—The com¬ 
 munal divinities, as we have noted already, belong to the 
 family of the chief or headman of the village. Where, 
 as does not happen everywhere in Africa, there is tribal 
 or national unity and a permanent chief or king, the an¬ 
 cestors of the king rise to the dignity of tribal or national 
 gods. Both these kinds of divinity have to deal, not so 
 much with the affairs of individuals, as with those of the 
 whole community. They will be consulted in case of an 
 epidemic, a drought, or other public calamity. Their aid 
 is invoked on behalf of the crops and the cattle. Natu¬ 
 rally they are called upon in time of war. We shall have 
 something more to say presently about the tribal divinities. 
 
 3. Communion with the Divinities 
 
 If ever there was a people conscious that they are sur¬ 
 rounded by a great cloud of witnesses it is the Bantu. 
 They might say with Milton: 
 
 ‘ ‘ Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
 Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 39 
 
 In and around the village and in the huts themselves these 
 spirits are continually present. It is only rarely, how¬ 
 ever, that 'they appear in person before the eyes of peo¬ 
 ple who are awake. How then are they supposed to make 
 their presence known ? 
 
 (a) They Often Come in Dreams .—When a man sees in 
 his sleep the phantom of a person he used to know, he 
 has no doubt that the person has actually visited him. If 
 it be a relative, and therefore in the ranks of his family 
 divinities, he will make an offering to the spirit when he 
 wakes. The departed often come in this way with benev¬ 
 olent motives,—to reveal the name of some drug, or the 
 composition of some charm, to give advice as to how to 
 reply to a charge that is hanging over a living man’s head, 
 to tell where game will be found, or to reveal the machi¬ 
 nations of some witch against members of the family. 
 
 ( b ) They Appear in the Forms of Animals .—The 
 Bantu believe that the dead take the form of animals such 
 as a mantis, a puff-adder, a crocodile or lion. Some men 
 and women are said to procure extremely powerful drugs 
 which enable them, at death, to become certain animals. 
 The writer was one day in the hut erected over the grave 
 of an influential chief, when some men showed him a tor¬ 
 toise which they declared to have issued from the grave 
 and to be the chief himself. This same chief was said to 
 be roaming the district in the form of a lion. Should peo¬ 
 ple of that community come across a lion eating his prey 
 in the forest, and should it leave the meat and walk off 
 at their approach, they would be convinced that they had 
 met their old chief again and that he had killed the ani¬ 
 mal expressly for their benefit. If people notice a snake 
 in the neighborhood of a grave, they believe it to be the 
 dead person buried there and will refrain from molest¬ 
 ing it. This is probably the motive of the python-worship 
 
40 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 found in Uganda, for example; the huge reptile has 
 a temple and an attendant to give it food, is regarded as 
 the giver of children, and receives from its suppliants 
 offerings of beer and goats. 
 
 (c) They Cause Sickness .—Divinities make their pres¬ 
 ence known also by causing sickness. Any disease, but 
 especially those in which delirium occurs, or in which 
 there is great emaciation, may be regarded as the act of 
 a divinity. It is his way of reminding the living of his 
 existence. Recourse is had in the first instance to the 
 diviner, who, after consulting his oracle, announces that 
 it is so-and-so who is causing the sickness, because the 
 family has neglected him lately. Then the members of 
 the family gather, make their offering and pray the 
 offended divinity to be appeased and permit the patient 
 to recover. 
 
 ( d ) They Speak through Mediums and Prophets. —An¬ 
 other way in which the divinities make themselves known 
 is by means of mediums and prophets. We are all fa¬ 
 miliar in these days with the pretensions of people in 
 America and Europe to hold intercourse with the dead. 
 Without presuming to estimate the truth there may be 
 in their claim, we may point out the fact that when they 
 speak of this as a new revelation spiritualists are wrong. 
 This sort of thing obtains in Africa and probably has ob¬ 
 tained for thousands of years. No unsophisticated Afri¬ 
 can would deny the possibility of the dead making their 
 will known to the living through a medium. The Bantu 
 make a regular practice of it and the oracles of the divini¬ 
 ties received in this way are accepted as law. The me¬ 
 dium is therefore a very important person. In Uganda 
 every temple erected for the accommodation of a deity 
 has at least one medium attached to it, very often a 
 woman, who periodically falls into a trance and delivers 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 41 
 
 the god’s messages. In other parts of Africa, though per¬ 
 haps not in such an organized manner, the same practice 
 prevails. There are occasional as well as professional 
 mediums. A person will suddenly he seized with a fit 
 and when addressed by those present will announce the 
 name of some deceased individual and proceed to deliver 
 a message from him. Sometimes in a mysterious awe¬ 
 inspiring fashion a number of people will be possessed 
 at once, will roll about foaming at the mouth, and, going 
 through the most terrible contortions of body, will throw 
 themselves on the ground, against rocks and trees or even 
 into the fire, without feeling pain. In such cases the 
 spirits have to be exorcised. Such a person may never 
 again be possessed, or he may thereafter be from time to 
 time affected by the spirit and deliver messages. Some¬ 
 times the announcement has to do with future events, that 
 there will be drought or famine or pestilence; sometimes 
 a spirit announces through the medium that he is about 
 to be reborn; another spirit threatens his heir with calam¬ 
 ity, if the children he left behind are not better treated. 
 Sometimes the message spoken by the medium is suf¬ 
 ficient to condemn a perfectly innocent person as a witch. 
 
 Now and then there arises in a tribe a man who gives 
 himself out to be some great one, some long-departed 
 hero, or even the Creator Himself. It is difficult to draw 
 the line between such prophets and the mediums we have 
 just spoken of; but these prophets do not always speak 
 in a trance; they go from place to place setting forth their 
 claims in an ordinary voice, but declaring themselves to 
 be possessed by, or to be speaking in the name of, some 
 divinity or god. They promise and threaten the most 
 extraordinary things. The writer knew of one who an¬ 
 nounced that he would destroy a certain grub that at the 
 time was devastating the crops, that he would turn the 
 
42 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 sun black for six days, would tear up the railway and 
 drive all the Europeans from the country. All this was 
 on the condition that the people would first destroy 
 their cattle. It is amazing how readily the people give 
 credence to these fellows. In this case the people had 
 actually begun to kill their cattle, when the British Gov¬ 
 ernment put a stop to the prophet’s activities. History 
 tells of many similar, and of some much more disastrous 
 “prophesyings” among the Bantu. 
 
 (e) They Take up Their Abode in Certain Objects .— 
 Another way the divinities make their presence felt is by 
 taking up their abode in certain objects such as a piece 
 of cloth, a basket, a doll, or a graven image. This idea 
 is closely akin to fetishism. Such objects are set aside 
 as sacred. The Ba-thonga have a very venerated object 
 which consists of the nails and hair of a long line of de¬ 
 ceased chiefs, kneaded together with the dung of the oxen 
 that were killed at their funerals, and all bound together 
 with thongs of hide. Whenever the chief of the tribe dies 
 his relics are added to the bundle. At present it is about 
 a foot in length. It is brought out and brandished by 
 the officiant when making a sacrifice, and is regarded as 
 in some way bound up with the life of the whole clan. 
 M. Junod, who described it., did not indicate whether this 
 “national amulet” is considered to be the localization of 
 the divinities of the tribe, but that would appear to be 
 its significance. It reminds us of the practice of the Ba- 
 ganda, who always remove the lower jawbone of the corpse 
 of the deceased king in the belief that his ghost clings 
 to it and will be quite satisfied to remain with it as long 
 as it is honored. The Ba-ganda possess the jawbones of 
 kings who lived a thousand years ago. A temple is 
 erected to receive the sacred relic. The spirit of the de¬ 
 ceased not only stays with the bone, but also takes posses- 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 43 
 
 sion of some man who is sent to the temple to be the 
 medium through whom it is possible to hold converse with 
 the defunct king. 
 
 4. Sacred Localities Associated with the Divinities 
 
 As far as the writer is aware the practice described in 
 the last paragraph is not common among the Bantu tribes; 
 nor are they widely accustomed to make graven images 
 of the dead. But they all have sacred spots which are 
 intimately associated with the departed. Naturally one 
 of these spots is at the grave. Many tribes erect minia¬ 
 ture huts over the graves, or in the vicinity, and there 
 make their offerings to the deceased. Others erect sim¬ 
 ilar “temples” in the villages and are careful to remove 
 them, whenever the village is shifted to a new site. Some 
 plant a ring of poles around the grave, poles cut from 
 some tree that readily takes root, so that in course of time 
 a grove marks the spot. The tribal divinities often have 
 vast groves of this kind associated with their worship. The 
 gateway of the village and the doorway of the hut are 
 also sacred places, for the departed congregate there and 
 protect their people going in and coming out. Offerings 
 to them are made at the threshold and at the foot of the 
 central supporting pole in the hut. In many of the large 
 village enclosures one will see a tree or a pronged-pole 
 that is also sacred; at the foot of them offerings are 
 made and upon their branches things are hung to put 
 them in the divinities’ keeping. Mountain tops are also 
 sacred places in some parts of Africa. 
 
 5. Prayers and Offerings to the Divinities 
 
 Here, then, the people gather to perform their reli¬ 
 gious rites; the members of a family at the grave or in the 
 hut, the village community under the sacred tree or 
 
44 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 around the grave, the larger community at the sacred 
 grove or before the temple erected for the tribal divinity. 
 Ancestor worship as it exists in Africa is a religion with¬ 
 out an organized priesthood. At least there is only a 
 rudimentary priesthood associated with the public divini¬ 
 ties. We have seen how each man approaches his own 
 tutelary genius. Within the family, the father or the 
 elder son of the deceased acts in the name of all the mem¬ 
 bers. Where the tribal divinity has a temple or sacred 
 grove, there is an individual who is placed in charge of it 
 and it is he who periodically summons the people to wor¬ 
 ship and leads their devotions. 
 
 The offerings to the divinities consist of things which 
 the living use in their ordinary every-day life: the pro¬ 
 duce of their fields and herds or simple articles of dress 
 and food. Except in the case of sacrifices on the larger 
 scale, as when cattle are offered to the tribal divinities, 
 the offerings have little or no intrinsic value. It is not, 
 therefore, a case of buying the favor of the divinities with 
 gifts of a high price, but rather of pleasing them by an 
 act of attention and affection. Indeed the simplest offer¬ 
 ing of all, and one which is the usual accompaniment of 
 prayers in some tribes, is the saliva. We cannot easily 
 bring ourselves to understand the condition of mind that 
 sees religious value in such an offering; the idea of spit¬ 
 ting as an act of worship is repellent to us. But if we 
 think of the spittle as what it is,—a part of oneself,— 
 then perhaps we may begin to realize how it can come to 
 have sacramental value as an offering. It is not that there 
 is any intrinsic worth in the spittle, or that it can conceiv¬ 
 ably be of any use to the divinity; but simply because its 
 value is nil, it acquires a real religious value. It is some¬ 
 thing like a lover offering a flower to his beloved. It cre¬ 
 ates a bond, or renews the bond, between the worshipper 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 45 
 
 and his divinity. And this gives a clue, I think, to the 
 meaning of all the offerings. They are not bribes. Nor 
 is the offering a magical performance. We are too apt to 
 conclude, perhaps, that mere ritual is regarded as effica¬ 
 cious in swaying the will of the divinities and gaining 
 their favor; we say that the acts of worship must be per¬ 
 formed at certain times, at certain places and in certain 
 prescribed ways, otherwise they would have no value; 
 once carried out in the proper manner the effect is sure 
 and certain. No doubt among the Bantu, as among peo¬ 
 ples of higher culture, worship often degenerates into 
 formalism of this character; but there can be little doubt 
 that to the more piously-minded of them, at any rate, these 
 acts of worship have a real religious value. They come 
 before their divinities with a prayer and an offering, 
 divinities who are not mere abstractions of thought, hut 
 the spirits of men and women who once lived here below 
 and are still full of human nature. These offerings create 
 and renew the bond which unites them all, and in the con¬ 
 tact the human soul feels itself lifted up and strengthened. 
 
 Of some tribes it is said that they never approach the 
 divinities as long as life runs smoothly. But it j^not true 
 of all. When a Thonga native has ground tobacco for 
 snuff, he puts two spoonfuls on the domestic altar as a 
 thank offering, one for the paternal and the other for the 
 maternal divinities. Many Bantu, when breaking their 
 fast in the morning, scatter a few morsels of bread, and, 
 when smoking the first morning pipe blow smoke up into 
 the air, with a few words, or with a silent thought, ad¬ 
 dressed to their guardian spirit or to the domestic divini¬ 
 ties. This is an acknowledgment of the spiritual presence 
 about them. 
 
 It is when the divinities make their displeasure felt by 
 causing a member of the family to fall ill that the family 
 
46 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 meets to make offerings. Consultation with the diviner 
 has revealed the identity of the offended divinity and now 
 the family meets in the house and its head prays thus: 
 “Tsu! If it he thou who art causing our child’s sickness, 
 see here is the beer that thou desirest and also some 
 tobacco; we pray thee, leave him alone that he may re¬ 
 cover.” With Tsu! he ejects a little saliva, and while 
 praying offers the beer in both hands, as if the divinity 
 were standing there in person. 
 
 The community makes its offerings at the seasons of 
 the year when the help of the divinities is most needed, 
 such as sowing and reaping time, and especially when 
 there is a drought. Some tribes have regular periods 
 when the communal or tribal divinities are worshipped. 
 One period may be at the turn of the year, when the 
 Pleiades appear in the sky, giving notice of the approach 
 of the cultivating season. This is a critical time. It is 
 the beginning of the new year. Blessing must be sought 
 on field and herd and community. Hence the great fes¬ 
 tival that so commonly takes place at this season. Another 
 supremely joyous festival takes place after the harvest is 
 gathered in. It is a Thanksgiving. All such festivals 
 have features in common. The people dance, dressed in 
 all their barbaric finery; they consume great quantities 
 of beer; there is often a slackening of restraints leading 
 to much license, though it is to he borne in mind that the 
 immorality on these occasions has often a ritual signifi¬ 
 cance. Among the Ba-ila and perhaps among other tribes, 
 there is no sacrifice on such occasions; there is no shed¬ 
 ding of the blood of oxen; there is no priestly ritual. 
 They are purely democratic festivals, in which chiefs, 
 freemen and slaves, men and women and children, all take 
 part in song and dance and feast and unite in invoking 
 the name of the great communal muzimo, who rejoices to 
 
CULT OF THE DEAD 
 
 47 
 
 see his people happy with their herds and flocks and will 
 respond by sending increase and plenty. 
 
 Expiatory sacrifices are offered when murder within 
 the community has occurred, for the great muzimo is the 
 guardian of the lives of his people and is seriously 
 offended when one of them is wantonly destroyed. The 
 murderer’s clansmen have to contribute a number of cattle 
 that are taken by the murdered man’s clan as blood-money. 
 They also have to bring one or two oxen that are solemnly 
 killed and offered to the muzimo on behalf of the whole 
 community as an expiation. 
 
 M. Junod, writing of the Ba-thonga, says that ancestor 
 worship “has no, or at least very little, connection with 
 the moral conduct of the individual.” 1 Whether this is 
 true of the Bantu generally depends to a great extent on 
 what we mean by “moral conduct.” It is questionable 
 whether men and women are more chaste, honest or truth¬ 
 ful because of their ancestors; in these respects the wor¬ 
 shippers do not rise superior to their divinities, who, 
 whatever else they have gained since departing this life, 
 have not made any real moral progress. But what has been 
 said above about the expiatory sacrifice when a murder has 
 been committed goes to show that, so far as some at least 
 of the Bantu are concerned, ancestor worship has some 
 ethical implication. To be sure that influence is limited: 
 a man will not desist from homicide, as homicide, out of 
 reverence for, or from fear of, his communal divinities. 
 They are quite indifferent as regards the lives of people 
 who do not belong to their particular community. As far 
 as they are concerned, the killing of a stranger is no mur¬ 
 der and no sin. Still, circumscribed as the moral influ¬ 
 ence may he, it is there. While perhaps the direct 
 influence over the individual may be small, it is certain 
 1 Junod, H. A., The Life of a South African Tribe, Vol. II, p. 388. 
 
48 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 that ancestor worship has considerable effect socially, espe¬ 
 cially as a binding force, and therefore indirectly it must 
 have considerable influence over the individual, in ways 
 difficult to define, perhaps, but none the less real. 
 
VII 
 
 NATURE SPIRITS 
 
 So much, then, for the ancestor worship of the Bantu. 
 Now another question arises: Have they any idea of spir¬ 
 itual beings apart from the spirits of men, and do they in 
 any sense worship them? We remember what Seneca 
 said: “If you come upon a grove of old trees that have 
 shot up above the common height and shut out the sight 
 of the sky by the gloom of their matted boughs, you feel 
 there is a spirit in the place, so lofty is the wood, so lone 
 the spot, so wondrous the thick unbroken shade.” 1 Do 
 the Bantu share that natural feeling, not only as regards 
 woods, but also in regard to rivers, mountains, springs, 
 lakes and the sea ? According to the testimony of many 
 writers the Bantu do believe in such nature spirits, but 
 it is very difficult to define them precisely. It would be 
 strange indeed if the mighty rivers of Africa, the expan¬ 
 sive lakes, the deep dark forests, as well as the gentle 
 bubbling springs and the rolling ocean, made no religious 
 impression upon the people who lived in their vicinity. 
 That, in one way or another, the Bantu are deeply im¬ 
 pressed by these things nobody can doubt who knows them. 
 But does their awe arise from, or induce, a belief that 
 these things are in themselves animate and divine, or that 
 they are the dwelling places of spirits ? And if the latter, 
 are the spirits the same as, or are they different from, the 
 1 Seneca, Epist. iv, 12.3. 
 
 49 
 
50 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 ancestral spirits? Probably all three varieties of the 
 belief exist among the Bantu. Thus Dr. Donald Fraser 
 says of the Tambuka that “many of the mighty natural 
 objects were worshipped, such as conspicuous hills, wild 
 waterfalls, great trees, deep pools. They were not rever¬ 
 enced as the dwelling-place of some deity or spirits, but 
 as themselves animate and divine. Thus two hills in the 
 Rukuru gorge are often worshipped. Passers in the gorge 
 declare that they can sometimes hear the cocks belonging 
 to the hills crow, and when the sound of the tumbling 
 water echoes between the mountain-sides they say the hills 
 are at war with one another, and they travel on in haste 
 and terror.” 1 Mr. Roscoe, writing of the Ba-ganda, 
 gives us another phase of this nature-worship. “The prin¬ 
 cipal rivers,” he says, “were thought to have spirits, which 
 were credited with powers for good or for evil.” 2 In the 
 old days no great river in Uganda was bridged; people 
 who wished to cross a stream had to swim, or to paddle a 
 canoe, or to jump from tuft to tuft on the papyrus roots, 
 in any case there being some danger attached to the cross¬ 
 ing. Therefore a traveller would take a few coffee-ber¬ 
 ries, and, after asking the river-spirit to give him a safe 
 crossing, he would throw the coffee-berries into the water. 
 If a man was carried away by the current, his friends did 
 not try to save him, for they feared that the spirit would 
 take them also. The Ba-ganda believed also in forest- 
 gods, who had to be consulted before any trees could be 
 felled, and who made hunters bold and protected them 
 from wild animals. Mr. Roscoe tells us that certain hill- 
 spirits were the ghosts of wild animals; he does not say 
 that any of the others were the spirits of men. When we 
 turn to the Ba-thonga, M. Junod speaks of lakes and 
 
 1 Fraser, D., Winning a Primitive People, pp. 122, 123. 
 
 3 Roscoe, J., The Bnganda, p. 318. 
 
NATURE SPIRITS 
 
 51 
 
 rivers inhabited by spirits and says that the more you 
 search the better you identify these lake and river spirits 
 with ancestor gods. He found one instance of what 
 seemed to be a true nature spirit, but further investiga¬ 
 tion proved that it too was identified with an ancestral 
 spirit. The writer’s own experience among the Ba-ila was 
 similar. They too stand in awe of mighty trees and speak 
 with bated breath of some mighty spirit in them, but one 
 always finds that the spirit was once a living man or 
 woman. When a site was selected for the mission station 
 at Kasenga, an old chief, whose forebears had formerly 
 lived there, came from some distance away to beg, indeed 
 to warn the writer, not to cut down certain trees and not 
 to use certain anthills as material for building. In case 
 they were thus used, he believed that powerful spirits who 
 lived in them would resent the interference. These 
 seemed at first to be nature spirits, but they turned out to 
 be the spirits of the old man’s ancestors. The more one 
 investigates the spirits believed in by the Ba-ila, the more 
 they resolve themselves into spirits of human beings. We 
 may leave the question at this point. Enough has been 
 said to show that the Bantu are vividly conscious that the 
 world around them is not merely material but is shot 
 through and through with spirit. 
 
VIII 
 
 >• 
 
 TRIBAL DIVINITIES PASSING OVER INTO 
 
 GODS 
 
 - h f \ 
 
 Some writers, like the Euhemerists of old, would have 
 us believe that “god” is synonymous with “dead ancestor,” 
 and that even the Supreme Being is no more nor less than 
 a glorified ghost. It can be shown that as far as the 
 Bantu is concerned this is not true. Let us be prepared 
 . ourselves to reach a conclusion by ‘ considering how much 
 there is of truth in the Euhemeristic contention. Let it 
 be admitted: at once that many of the gods worshipped by 
 w the Bantu are the ghosts of dead men. It is likewise true 
 that there is in their belief a Supreme Being who is not a 
 ghost. 
 
 s • If one asks what difference there is between a divinity 
 and a god, it must be admitted that the difference is one 
 of .degree and not of kind; both classes are varieties of 
 the species, ancestral spirit. I use the word “god” to 
 indicate that variety which is of the greater importance, 
 is reverenced over a wider area, and of which the human 
 origin is quite forgotten, or almost forgotten. 
 
 It is a well known fact that many people imagine 
 heaven to be a glorified earth so that they organize it in 
 imagination after the manner of the social system to 
 which they are accustomed. If they are used to a mon¬ 
 archy on earth, they naturally think of a monarchy in the 
 spirit world, with a chief, counsellors, etc. Theological 
 
 52 
 
DIVINITIES PASSING OVER INTO GODS 53 
 
 beliefs are largely determined by the structure of society 
 on earth. The Ba-ganda are the only Bantu, as far as the 
 writer knows, that have had an uninterrupted line of 
 kings for at least a thousand years. It is only natural 
 that they should have developed ancestor-worship into a 
 more elaborate polytheism than can be found among other 
 Bantu tribes; We may say of all of these gods what Mr. 
 Roscoe says of one of them: “The human element has 
 been lost in the divine, . . . the natural has been effaced 
 by the supernatural, until, in the minds of the common 
 people, only the supernatural remains.” 1 These gods , 
 need not be described minutely. There are about forty in 
 all. Among them is Mukasa, the god of plenty, benign, 
 who never asked for the life of a human being and never 
 had anything to do with war; Kibuka, the war-god; 
 Walumbe, the god of death, etc. These were all indisr 
 putably men at one time. And what is so highly devel¬ 
 oped in Uganda we find on a limited scale in other parts > 
 of Africa. He who sets out to enquire into Bantu religion 
 and especially into their idea of God, must fie on his 
 guard, lest he take a deified ancestor for the Supreme 
 Being. 
 
 1 Roscoe, J., The Baganda, p. 291. 
 
 f 
 
IX 
 
 THE BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME 
 
 BEING 
 
 It lias been said that “the most obscure and difficult 
 question connected with the religion of the Bantu is 
 whether they have any belief in a Supreme God, a Cre¬ 
 ator, an overruling Providence.” 1 It is the writer’s 
 strong conviction that the more the Bantu are studied, the 
 more confidently this question can be answered in the 
 affirmative. 
 
 1. It Plays an Unproductive Part in Bantu Life 
 
 While the Bantu believe in a Supreme Being, we must 
 add that their conception is not a vital, effective one. It 
 does not enter into their daily life, as does the belief in 
 charms or the belief in the ancestral spirits. This is one 
 distinguishing feature between God and the divinities. 
 The divinities have local habitations,—temples, groves or 
 mountain-tops; the Supreme Being has none. The divini¬ 
 ties may have a priesthood, however rudimentary; the 
 Supreme Being has none set apart, in any sense, for His 
 service. Offerings are made to the divinities; rarely if 
 ever are any made to the Supreme Being. Prayers are 
 commonly addressed to the divinities; to the Supreme 
 Being they are made only on occasions of extreme neces¬ 
 sity. The people can understand divinities, who are like 
 
 1 Hartland, E. S., Article on Bantu and South Africa, in Hast¬ 
 ings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II, p. 363. 
 
 54 
 
BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING 55 
 
 unto themselves, whom they may have seen in the flesh, 
 who know human life from the inside and are ever near; 
 the Supreme Being no man hath ever seen; He is remote, 
 inscrutable. The divinities have to do with individuals, 
 communities, tribes; the Supreme Being is Creator and 
 Lord of all; His sphere is cosmical; He controls the 
 great forces of nature and but rarely has to do with indi¬ 
 viduals and communities. In all these respects there is, 
 in the mind of the Bantu, a great and striking difference 
 between the ancestral divinities and the Supreme Being. 
 The latter is away on the fringe of their consciousness; 
 the former occupy the center of attention. 
 
 We may, in this respect, even compare the native mind 
 to a palimpsest, a manuscript which has been over-writ¬ 
 ten again and again so that the original writing is de¬ 
 ciphered only with great difficulty. It is the writer’s 
 conviction, in which many experienced students of the 
 Bantu agree, that in former times they had a clearer idea 
 of God and that it has been obscured by an overgrowth of 
 dynamism, fetishism and ancestor-worship. This is some¬ 
 what analogous to what we find in certain countries nearer 
 home, where the saints, who were and still are regarded 
 officially as mediators, have attained such a position as 
 almost to take the place of the Heavenly Father in the 
 minds of the ignorant populace. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact, vouched for by many missiona¬ 
 ries, that when one goes to pagan Bantu one does not have 
 to prove the existence of God. They easily accept the 
 idea of the God of Christianity. As M. Junod says: 
 “They have almost no difficulty in believing that this is 
 the real God to be worshipped. ... It seems as if one 
 were telling them an old story, with which they had been 
 quite familiar but had now half forgotten.” 1 
 
 1 Junod, H. A., The Life of a South African Tribe , Vol. II, p. 410. 
 
56 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 How far it has been forgotten may be seen in the case 
 of some South African tribes. The word now in use for 
 “God” among the Ba-suto is Molimo, which is really 
 the same, and used to mean the same, as muzimo, the com¬ 
 mon designation of the ancestral spirit. The early mis¬ 
 sionaries, since they could find no other term, used 
 Molimo as a translation of “God” and of course the 
 natives have come to give it the Christian sense, but orig¬ 
 inally it simply meant “ghost.” The word for God in the 
 Zulu language today is UrTixo but it is a borrowed name; 
 they seem to have had none of their own in use, when the 
 missionaries first came among them. But the traditions 
 of these tribes show that formerly both the Zulus and the 
 Ba-suto had some conception of a powerful and beneficent 
 Being distinct from the spirits of their ancestors. Dr. 
 Callaway tells us that the Zulus spoke of the Lord of 
 Heaven. An old Musuto, horn at the end of the eighteenth 
 century, told a missionary of an adventure he had with 
 lions which ended in finding himself at the foot of a steep 
 precipice with a broken leg and with the prospect either 
 of dying of starvation or being devoured by wild beasts. 
 In his extremity he prayed this prayer: “Oh, new gods, 
 pray for me to the God of old that He may help me.” 
 Among the central tribes, the name of God is not for¬ 
 gotten and we shall now relate what they say about Him, 
 although their idea at the best remains somewhat otiose 
 and unproductive. 
 
 2. The Three Most Common Names for God and Their 
 Meanings 
 
 One should not he surprised to find that the idea of God 
 is hazy among the untutored Bantu. Most men, most civ¬ 
 ilized men, have vague ideas of Him. It is said of a very 
 good and very candid American deacon that, in answer to 
 
BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING 57 
 
 his pastor’s question at a prayeruneeting, he defined his 
 idea of God as “a kind of oblong blur.” What, then, is to 
 be expected of pagan Bantu ? 
 
 Sir H. H. Johnston in his monumental Comparative 
 Grammar of the Bantu Languages” has collected vocab¬ 
 ularies of three hundred and sixty-six Bantu and eighty- 
 seven semi-Bantu languages and dialects. It is interest¬ 
 ing to observe that in almost all these there is given an 
 equivalent for Cod.” But of course it is not sufficient 
 for them to have the names; we want to know what they 
 mean to them. It is possible that some of them are the 
 names of departed ancestors, who have been elevated into 
 gods. In the absence of detailed and trustworthy infor¬ 
 mation it is impossible to say. Some of the names are in 
 use by single tribes; some are known and used over large 
 areas. Preeminent among the latter are three names 
 which together cover the usage in a large part of Central 
 Africa. In about fifty languages and dialects there are 
 variants of the name Mulungu ; in about forty more there 
 there are variants of the name Nyambe; and in about 
 fifteen widely spread languages we find the name Leza in 
 slightly different forms. It is interesting to note that 
 Mulungu is confined to the tribes in the east, as Nyambe 
 is confined to those in the west, while Leza is in use by 
 tribes in the central parts. These three names for God 
 have been carefully studied. While probably of none of 
 them have we yet an exhaustive account, enough has been 
 written to enable us to understand what they mean to the 
 people using them. Moreover, we find that the ideas 
 behind these names are very much alike, so that it is pos¬ 
 sible to form some conception of what the Bantu mean 
 by “God.” 
 
 An important aid in this investigation is the fact that 
 besides the names above mentioned, most of these tribes 
 
58 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 have secondary or additional titles for the Supreme 
 Being. Dr. Farnell says: “The epithets whereby a 
 Greek divinity was addressed in prayer and in official 
 hymns give the best clue to the ideas of ancient worship.” 
 When, for example, we are told that the Greeks addressed 
 Zeus with such titles as “cloud-wrapped,” “delighting in 
 thunder,” we know some at least of the ideas held in 
 regard to him. There is a widespread custom among the 
 Bantu of giving such titles to animals and men as well as 
 to God. When a man, for example, sees a dove spreading 
 its wings in a certain way, he greets it with this saluta¬ 
 tion : Chinakatuetue, chisangila-ku-balombe-ku-bashimbi- 
 ndukubankuba nsangila , which means, “Oh Chinaka-tue- 
 tue, giver-of-happiness-to-men-to-girls-not-so-much, make 
 me happy.” Invocations of the Supreme Being often take 
 much the same form as this; and just as this many- 
 hyphened phrase gives us one of the Bantu notions in 
 regard to the dove, that is, tl\at it gives happiness, so do 
 the epithets addressed to God contain a suggestion of the 
 theology of the Bantu. 
 
 We may now briefly sum up what we can learn from 
 an examination of the three names mentioned above. 
 
 ( a ) God is Intimately Associated with the Sky and 
 What Comes from It. —When we civilized people say “it 
 r&ins’^ or “it blows,” our learned grammarians call the 
 word “it” a prop-word and tell us that it remains in such 
 sentences as evidence of an ancient belief that the sky-god 
 fell in the form of rain, and so on. In place of our word 
 “it” the Ba-ila. say “Leza,” that is, God. Thus for “it 
 blows” they say “Leza blows”; for “it rains” they say 
 “Leza falls.” Especially in those parts of Africa where 
 rain is scarce and where the people depend entirely upon 
 it for watering their crops, the rain is intimately associ¬ 
 ated with the Supreme Being; indeed some give the same 
 \ ‘ 
 
BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING 59 
 
 i 
 
 name “Leza” to both. And, as we should expect, it is 
 particularly in times of drought that the people seek after 
 God. They meet in great assemblies and call upon Him. 
 “Come to us,” cry the Ba-ila ? “come to us a continued 
 rain; Oh Leza, fall.” And as is the rain, so are thunder 
 and lightning regarded as manifestations of the Supreme - 
 Being. The rainbow is commonly spoken of as “God’s 
 bow.” 
 
 ( b ) God is the Creator. —However they may name 
 Him,— Nyambe, Leza , Mulungu, —the Bantu regard the 
 Supreme Being as the Creator of all things. Such titles 
 as these are given to Him: “The Moulder,” “The Great 
 Constructor,” “The First to do Things,” “The Almighty.” ' 
 
 ( c ) God is the Determiner of Destiny. —The writer re¬ 
 members an old pagan saying to him: “Life is like a labor- 
 ticket that the white men give to their workmen; before 
 your time is up, you cannot leave, but as soon as it ex- . 
 pires, you get your money and have to go.” His idea » 
 was that the term of our life, our destiny, is fixed by the 
 Supreme Being and there is no escape from it. When a 
 person dies a natural death the Ba-ila, with no irrever¬ 
 ence, often say: “God has snapped off his pumpkin,” 
 meaning that He takes a life when the time arrives.;. The 
 same people have a proverb: “When you are happiest 
 God sees you,” not to share in your happiness, but to cut 
 you off with a swift disaster. Often they will say of an ■„ 
 unfortunate person: “God has looked upon him.” Nht--' 
 ural death, as we should call it, is named by many-of ,'ihe 
 
 Bantu, “A death that comes from God.” Whatever in life- 
 ' t > 
 is most inexplicable, that cannot be put down to the agency 
 
 of witchcraft, talismans, divinities, is ascribed to Him. 
 
 ( d ) Yet There is Some Idea of God as Benevolent.— 
 Though death is thus often associated with God, it is per¬ 
 haps significant that the Bantu have made some attempt 
 
60 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 to absolve God from the responsibility of death, as if they 
 felt that it was not compatible with His benevolence. 
 There is a well known Bantu myth which represents God 
 in the beginning of things as sending the chameleon to 
 tell men that they should live forever. Through the cha¬ 
 meleon’s dilatoriness the message came too late, and to this 
 day the people hate that innocent creature for having 
 caused death to pass upon all men. Another myth ascribes 
 the first death to the inhumanity of man. It would seem 
 that the Bantu thought that death was not in the original 
 constitution of things, and that they are loth to ascribe 
 its coming to the Supreme Being. And the fact that the 
 rain falls on the evil and the good, the just and the un¬ 
 just, and falls, in greater or less amount with regularity, 
 year by year, is evidence to their minds that the Supreme 
 Being wishes men well; so they name Him “Nourisher,” 
 “The Bountiful Giver,” “Guardian of Men.” 
 
 (e) Morality is Ascribed to God .—That God should 
 take note of all doings of individual men and should 
 reward and punish them according to their deeds is an 
 idea quite remote from the Bantu mind. Yet in some 
 faint way they have a notion that He makes for right¬ 
 eousness. They commonly name Him in oaths, and a fre¬ 
 quent curse on their lips is, “May God smite you.” Cer¬ 
 tain tribes assign the origin of some of their customs to 
 Him; others, when they see a halo around the sun or 
 moon, say there is a judgment above. The expiatory sac¬ 
 rifice offered to the communal divinity after a murder has 
 already been described. Moreover it is quite certain that 
 the Ba-ila think that the divinity conveyed the sacrifice 
 to Leza, the Supreme Being, for he was responsible to 
 Him for the lives of his people. 
 
 (/) God is a Person. —“Leza” and “Nyambe” are per¬ 
 sonal names; they are each spoken of as “he” not “it.” 
 
BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING 61 
 
 But “Mulungu” is not a personal name; it is the name of 
 a class. Many people include under the term not the 
 Deity only but also all that pertains to the spirit world. 
 Indeed many of those that use the names “Leza” and 
 “Nyambe” and speak of God as “He” are not quite cer¬ 
 tain that He is not the natural phenomena of rain, thun¬ 
 der and the like, or that He is not at most the animating 
 spirit within those phenomena. We have seen that the 
 Bantu believe the world to be permeated by hidden mys¬ 
 terious energies, and it would seem that many of them do 
 not already distinguish God from these; to them God is 
 the power that works in and from the sky. The other 
 facts already mentioned, especially some of the praise- 
 titles ascribed to God, show that God is by many of the 
 Bantu regarded as a Person. 
 
 3. Their Groping after God 
 
 It would be an exaggeration to represent the Bantu as 
 conscious seekers after God. It is but rarely that they 
 offer prayers and sacrifices to Him; He is to almost all 
 an “absentee God.” Yet their attitude towards Him is 
 reverential and they have tried to reconcile the hard facts 
 of life with a conviction of His benevolence. 
 
 That some have been impelled by the enigmas of life 
 to seek God—and have sought Him in vain—would seem 
 to be the meaning of a legend narrated by the Ba-ila. It 
 tells of a very old woman who, perplexed by the riddle of 
 this painful earth set out to find God and to demand from 
 him an explanation. God, they say, had beset her before 
 and behind and had laid His hand upon her, taking from 
 her all that she had, to the last of her children’s children. 
 Then into her heart came this desperate resolution; some¬ 
 where up there in the sky must be God’s dwelling, if only 
 she could reach it. She began to rear a tower to reach to 
 
62 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 heaven, but again and again it fell. She had to surrender 
 in despair any hope of reaching God in that way, but 
 somewhere there must he another road to Him! She had 
 noticed that on the far horizon earth and sky seemed to 
 touch. Surely, if she could get there, she could be able 
 to find God at last. So she set out on her long journey 
 and as she went through many lands the people asked 
 her: “Where are you going all alone, old woman V 9 And 
 she replied: “I am seeking God.”—“Seeking God ! What 
 for?”—“I want to ask, ‘Why?’ Tell me, did ever any 
 one suffer as I have suffered ?”—“Suffer ? How have you 
 suffered ?”—“I am alone. He has taken all whom I ever 
 loved, all that ever loved me. I want to ask Him, 
 ‘Why V ” And they said to .her: “Old woman, in what 
 do you differ from others ? God afflicts us all in the same 
 way. He besets us, we cannot shake Him off.” TKe old 
 woman never found God; and from her day to this no¬ 
 body has ever had an answer to her question. So say the 
 Ba-ila, and in this legened one seems to hear the ques¬ 
 tionings of all the millions of the Bantu. What answer is 
 there but Christ? 
 
 4. Origin and Value of the Idea 
 
 Various attempts have been made to explain the origin 
 of the idea of God found in elementary religions. Some 
 have considered it so incongruous with other beliefs and 
 with the state of society among the people where it is 
 found that it must be an importation from abroad. Some 
 have conjectured that the idea has birth in the mind of 
 the missionary, who now reads into the beliefs of the peo¬ 
 ple what he first suggested to them. This may be dis¬ 
 missed at once. Both the names for God and the ideas 
 about Him are found where no missionary has ever 
 taught. It used to be said that the Supreme Being was 
 
BANTU CONCEPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING 63 
 
 only the dead hero elevated to the highest power. This 
 cannot nowadays be entertained. More recently it has 
 been suggested that the idea of God in elementary reli¬ 
 gions arises by a personification of Mana,—the name that 
 is given by the Pacific Islanders to that mysterious energy 
 of which we have spoken. There may be some truth in 
 this suggestion. Undoubtedly the aspect under which 
 God most appeals to the Bantu is His power. We can 
 easily imagine a stage at which primitive people thought 
 of this immanent energy working in all things without 
 ascribing it to any personality. The same entity that 
 gave efficacy to a drug and to a charm, that enabled men 
 to walk and talk and perform all their functions, was con¬ 
 ceived as working also in the heavens, gathering the 
 clouds, flashing in the lightning, rolling in the thunder, 
 soughing in the wind and falling in the rain. The un¬ 
 tutored savage would agree with Herbert Spencer that 
 “amidst all the mystery of our inscrutable existence there 
 remains the one absolute certainty that we are in the pres¬ 
 ence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all 
 things proceed.” But just as he has advanced from the 
 idea of a vital principle in his body to the conception of 
 a personality that is independent of the body, so in the 
 highest phase of his belief has he advanced to the con¬ 
 cept of a Personal Being distinct from the cosmical 
 energies. 
 
 One might conjecture, but could not prove, that the an¬ 
 cestors of the Bantu were in touch perhaps with some 
 monotheistic people, Semitic or other, and that this con¬ 
 tact was sufficient to crystallize their ideas on the subject. 
 
 For us Christian people no theory of the origin of the 
 Bantu conception of God can be complete that does not 
 include the guiding Spirit of God who wills to be known 
 of His children. He who believes in that Spirit will look 
 
64 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 upon dynamism as the pathway along which men have 
 been led towards God. 
 
 To the missionary the value of the idea can hardly he 
 over-estimated. He has not to begin his work by proving 
 the existence of God. He will find among these pagans 
 those who are as sure of God’s existence as he himself is. 
 How very much more difficult would his work be, were it 
 otherwise and he had to demonstrate God’s existence, in¬ 
 culcate reverence, and give the first elementary lesson in 
 prayer to an unseen being! The foundation of his work 
 is already laid. Yet what we have said is sufficient to 
 show that all is not done that calls for doing. It matters 
 much that men should believe in God’s existence; what 
 kind of a God they believe in matters much more. One 
 finds agnostics among the Bantu. Men who have never 
 heard of the Synthetic Philosophy, who could not define 
 their terms, would say in their own fashion, with Spencer, 
 that the actuality lying behind all appearance is unknow¬ 
 able. One finds others, too, who cherish the thought of 
 God’s remoteness, because it is the more comfortable belief 
 for themselves; a God near at hand, they feel, would not 
 tolerate their evil ways. To the great mass of people, 
 God is there, hut He is veiled amid the silences. It is for 
 the missionary to make God present and alive and real to 
 them by introducing them to Him who is the Way to the 
 Father and by making the life and love of Christ mean¬ 
 ingful and credible by demonstrating it through his own 
 daily life and conduct. 
 
X 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 
 
 In what precedes there has been an attempt to make an 
 impartial examination of Bantu religion in all its aspects, 
 good and bad. It now remains to estimate its perma¬ 
 nence and to relate it to Christianity and the Christian 
 approach. 
 
 1. Aspects of Bantu Religious Life 
 
 (a) It is Real .—The Bantu have a genuine religion 
 and are eminently religious. In the great controversy 
 between the spiritual and the material, between religion 
 and non-religion, they are on the side of the angels. This 
 is a great preliminary asset. There is a sub-stratum of 
 truth in their religious conceptions. There is such a 
 thing as all-immanent energy; there is a spirit in man 
 that survives the dissolution of the body; there is a God 
 distinct from the powers of Nature; there is such a thing 
 as retribution. They have gone wrong, tragically wrong, 
 in many of their inferences, as when, basing their prac¬ 
 tices upon the principles of dynamism, they seek out and 
 cruelly put witches and wizards to death, and when they 
 carry their animistic beliefs to the logical extreme in mas¬ 
 sacring women and slaves to give the deceased a retinue; 
 but they are right fundamentally in many things. Many 
 of their social customs and institutions have religious 
 sanctions; some of the worst, other than those just 
 referred to, are grounded in religious convictions. 
 
 65 
 
66 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 ( b ) Yet It is a Religion of Fear. —Their religion places 
 the Bantu in continual bondage to fear. This is not true 
 in every respect, but it is true on the whole. They fear 
 evil spirits. They fear magical powers wrought by 
 witches and wizards. They are in bondage to irrational 
 tabus. Nobody can live among them without realizing 
 this aspect of their life. Stewart of Lovedale wrote out 
 of the fullness of his knowledge: “The poorness and hard¬ 
 ness, narrowness and joylessness of human existence in 
 paganism, in Central Africa at least, must be seen to be 
 understood.” It is true. But above all, what strikes one 
 about them is their shrinking, suspicious, apprehensive 
 attitude to life, and this is the legitimate fruit of their 
 religious belief. The religion of love, when accepted, 
 brings a sense of great deliverance. Christianity is free¬ 
 dom from the fear that hath torment. 
 
 (c) It is Doomed to Pass Away. —The actual Bantu 
 religion cannot survive contact with civilization. Year 
 by year the waves of European civilization are sweeping 
 in irresistibly upon the Bantu. They are being rudely 
 shaken out of the torpor of centuries. But yesterday, it 
 seems, they were living in a secluded world of their own, 
 living as their forefathers had lived for centuries, with 
 the very dimmest notions of any more spacious universe. 
 Now the energetic white man has burst in upon them, 
 with his railways, his motor-cars, his flying machines, his 
 passion for precious metals, his hunger for land, his need 
 for trade. No wonder they feel harried and perplexed. 
 The change is too rapid. They are being educated, not 
 only by missions, but also to some extent in government 
 schools and, above all, by contact with white men on rail¬ 
 ways, plantations and mines. A profound change is 
 everywhere taking place in their social life. Until re¬ 
 cently, they knew no external authority but that of their 
 
CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 67 
 
 own chiefs. Now their country is parcelled out among 
 alien European nations, who have sent white magistrates 
 to govern them. The most enlightened governments every¬ 
 where seek to rule through the old-established chiefdoms 
 and thus to maintain the tribal society, but however gen¬ 
 uinely they may be anxious to maintain and strengthen 
 the authority of these chiefs, inevitably the presence of a 
 white magistrate undermines their position. Their people 
 can now appeal to the magistrate against their decisions. 
 They can be removed from office. They are deprived of 
 the power of life and death which, in consultation with 
 their counsellors, they once enjoyed. We are not com¬ 
 plaining of this state of affairs; it is inevitable and re¬ 
 sults in the abolition of much cruel despotism. Life is 
 now in many respects securer than ever it was before. 
 But what it means is that the tribal life tends to break up 
 under the impact of alien civilization and with the tribal 
 life evaporate many of the restraints to which they have 
 hitherto been subject. Much of their religion is quite 
 incongruous with the changed conditions, for it is inti¬ 
 mately linked up with the tribal system and can hardly 
 survive it. At its best it was a tribal religion. It was 
 closely attached to the soil, the hallowed soil where their 
 ancestors were buried. They gathered there around the 
 sacred grove in the presence of the ancestral divinity, who 
 was the strongest of their tribal bonds. He kept them 
 together in a common allegiance to him. However inade¬ 
 quate in our judgment the moral implications of that alle¬ 
 giance may be, it is the strongest of their ties. Cut away 
 belief in the ancestral spirits and the tribe becomes a mere 
 conglomeration of individuals without responsibility the 
 one towards another. The chief himself, whether elected 
 to his office or whether he inherits of right, depends for 
 his authority in the last resort upon religious sanctions. 
 
68 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 He wields his power, not through any police force, not 
 because of his wealth, but simply through his personality. 
 His power rests upon public opinion, and in the eyes of 
 his public he is a sacrosanct person, deriving his wisdom, 
 his personality, his authority, from occult powers. De¬ 
 stroy belief in occult powers, all that we mean by dynam¬ 
 ism, and the chief becomes a nullity, a mere puppet 
 obeying the directions of an alien hand. So with the tri¬ 
 bal morality. As we have seen already, it is very largely 
 based upon tabu, which rests upon a dynamistic basis. 
 Education and a wider experience of the world will dis¬ 
 integrate many of the present customs and show the Bantu 
 that much of their tribal morality is founded upon wrong 
 suppositions. They will learn that a curse means noth¬ 
 ing, that science gives no sanction to what they have 
 believed to be the inevitable connection between certain 
 acts and certain consequences. They will see that after 
 all these are but imagination beliefs. As we have seen, 
 murder within a clan was not, among many tribes at least, 
 punished by the chief; it was the restraint exercised by 
 a dynamistic belief that kept men, under provocation, 
 from slaying aged members of their family; they feared 
 the curse which like dreaded Furies they were sure would 
 dog their steps till they were overtaken. Persuade them 
 that this restraint is only a figment of the imagination 
 and that only the gallows awaits the murderer and a 
 weaker sanction is substituted for a stronger; the mur¬ 
 derer may hope by luck or by cunning to escape the gal¬ 
 lows ; he could not in any way whatever escape the effect 
 of the curse. Such imagination beliefs have hitherto 
 largely supplied the element of cohesion in their society; 
 delusions have preserved order. We may well ask: If 
 civilization ruthlessly rends the fabric upon which native 
 society is built, how shall we sustain the edifice ? 
 
CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 69 
 
 2. The Future of the Bantu Face 
 
 The Bantu are not likely to die out. They should 
 develop industrially and intellectually, for they have that 
 in them which should carry them far. But what if they 
 gain in this way and lose their soul, by being left with¬ 
 out religion and moral sanctions ? They will gain nothing 
 and the world will gain a new problem,—the problem of 
 fifty millions of educated, industrialized blacks with no 
 moral restraints beyond the laws imposed upon them by 
 alien nations. The black man with a thin veneer of civ¬ 
 ilization and without religious faith is a dangerous person. 
 The greatest disaster that could befall the Bantu would 
 be a secular scientific education. They may become Mo¬ 
 hammedans, as many of them already have, but can 
 Christian America and Europe regard with equanimity 
 the prospect of such a tremendous accession to Moslem 
 power? In some respects, undoubtedly, the Bantu would 
 gain by such conversion, but would it be the best thing 
 for them ? Or, lastly, they may become Christians. That 
 is the best thing, the writer is convinced, that can happen 
 to them. 
 
 3. What Christianity will do for the Bantu 
 
 (a) It will Make Them Sure of God .—Not merely will 
 it reveal Him as the God of Nature, but as the source and 
 sanction of moral law, the impersonation of righteousness 
 and love; in a word, as the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 (b) It will Moralize Their Whole Life .—It will substi¬ 
 tute the eternal moral law for the evanescent, altogether 
 inadequate, tribal morality, and will give an incentive to 
 higher living, purifying away the actual foul condition of 
 things. There is no use in mincing w r ords here. Some 
 people used to have the idea, and perhaps still have it, 
 
70 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 that the “primitive savage” was an innocent creature, 
 until the wicked white man came along and taught him 
 the vices of civilization. As a matter of fact, the depraved 
 white man has nothing to teach the pagan that he does not 
 already know. Many of the Bantu tribes were actually 
 on the way to extinction through their beastly immorality, 
 when the missionaries first came among them. That great 
 authority on Africa, Sir Harry Johnston, has recently 
 written: “In some writings on Africa, missionary work 
 is still sneered at; but one result—especially in South 
 and East Africa—has been to raise the birth-rate 
 among the negroes by discouraging polygamy, and above 
 all by strenuously urging the abolition of the depraving 
 initiation ceremonies and of all immodest behavior 
 among young girls and boys.” There is nothing whatever 
 in Bantu religion as it exists today that can better the 
 moral state of the people. They need the absolute im¬ 
 peratives and the moral ideals that Christianity brings. 
 
 (c) It ivill Liberate Them from Their Fears. —Chris¬ 
 tianity will convince them of the friendliness of the uni¬ 
 verse and set them free to develop whatever of good there 
 is in them. The fear, which we have seen characterizes 
 them at present, paralyzes all effort. A man simply dare 
 not make himself conspicuous. To raise his head above his 
 fellows is but to give the signal for his own destruction. 
 There are, no doubt, other causes for the African’s un- 
 progressiveness, but not the least in importance of these 
 causes is this fear that freezes all initiative. Set the Afri¬ 
 can free from that fear, let him once stand up upon his 
 feet and look out upon earth and heaven with confidence, 
 and he will mount. And what can give that confidence 
 and hopefulness like the religion of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 ( d) It will Make for a Healthy and Progressive Indi¬ 
 viduality. —It will develop the sense of the individual, as 
 
CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 71 
 
 against corporate, responsibility. A pagan Bantu hardly 
 realizes his own personality. A man is a member of a 
 clan, of a tribe, of a family, and as such shares respon¬ 
 sibility and privilege with others. Social bonds of this 
 kind are a good thing, but they are not altogether good, 
 when they prevent the growth of individual responsibility. 
 A man does not think for himself; he has no sense of be¬ 
 ing accountable for his actions except to members of his 
 own group. Under present conditions he leaves his home 
 for a long period of service at some distant mine and on 
 his return all his savings are taken by lazy fellows who 
 remained at home and who by clan-rights have a claim 
 upon his possessions. Men will not long endure such 
 communism. They will inevitably become individualists. 
 The necessary evolution is not without its perils; Chris¬ 
 tianity will step in to give a sense of responsibility to the 
 individualist, and will preserve what is best in the clan 
 system,—the brotherliness, the corporate feeling and the 
 sense of obligation to the common good. 
 
 “The pagan African,” says one well-informed writer, 
 “is what he is because of his religion.” Give him a new 
 religion, a real, vital, enlightened religion, and he will 
 be a new man. Christianity will save him, because it will 
 enter into every relation of his life to give it restraint and 
 uplift; nothing else can. 
 
 If it seems to any reader that the argument has been 
 conducted on the utilitarian principle that religion is 
 useful to the magistrate, the writer can only say that he 
 is far from believing that the Bantu must be evangelized 
 in order to make them more useful men and to prevent 
 them from becoming a peril to the world. The black 
 man, too, is God’s child, and has the same inherent right 
 with ourselves to know of the Heavenly Father’s will and 
 love. 
 
72 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 4. The Acquisition of Experience hy the Friendly Stu¬ 
 dent of the Bantu 
 
 While the general public will be interested by this 
 frank interpretation of Bantu life and thought, the book 
 will come also into the hands of young men and women 
 who intend to go as missionaries to Africa. This fact 
 makes appropriate certain bits of advice which grow out 
 of active missionary experience. 
 
 (a) Take Pains to Understand the Viewpoint of the 
 People .—One who comes into close relations with these 
 fine, virile Africans will discover that, while they are re¬ 
 ligious at heart, they look at many things from an angle 
 wholly foreigu to an Anglo-Saxon. If the missionary or 
 the publicist is to get at their inner motives and ideals, 
 he must give them most careful study. 
 
 ( b ) Cultivate Friendly Relations with Them .—The 
 young missionary must not fail to make a close, direct 
 study of the social and religious customs and ideas of the 
 people. This he cannot do satisfactorily from books, how¬ 
 ever well written. Nor can he get them properly from 
 converts to Christianity. He will be well advised to make 
 friends with the rankest old pagan he can find, sitting at 
 his feet and absorbing his point of view. When such a 
 man’s confidence has been gained, he will talk freely. His 
 mental vigor will surprise the novice and afford him a 
 very precious grasp of the native mind. The Bantu are 
 not simpletons; the more a missionary penetrates their 
 minds, the more he respects them as a race. 
 
 ( c ) Master the Language of the People .—It goes with¬ 
 out saying that before this advice can be carried out the 
 missionary must have secured an adequate knowledge of 
 the language. He should be very cautious in accepting 
 any information about the people’s beliefs that comes to 
 
CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 73 
 
 him through the medium of English. It is so fatally 
 easy when expressing African conceptions in one’s own 
 tongue to confound the sense of words. For instance, 
 one may be told that the Bantu believe in a “soul,” but 
 it would not do to leap to the conclusion that their ideas 
 of the soul are identical with our own. A real knowl¬ 
 edge of the language will help to avoid such pitfalls. 
 The missionary keen on his work will not be content with 
 gaining a smattering of the language. He must know it 
 so thoroughly as to be able to follow every ramification 
 of African thought. He should aim at attaining such 
 proficiency that the people will recognize him among 
 themselves as a leading authority on it. He should know 
 it better even than any of them do. Language, it has been 
 well said, is a temple which enshrines the soul of a peo¬ 
 ple. No time and no effort must be begrudged by the 
 young missionary in penetrating to that sacred enclosure 
 by a diligent study of the native language. And expe¬ 
 rience proves that unless he resolutely sets about the task 
 in the early days of his service, before he is ensnared in 
 the routine of his ministry, he is very unlikely ever to 
 reach the goal. 
 
 ( d ) Cultivate Tact and Patience .—It should be noted 
 that great tact is needed in securing reliable information 
 from the natives. As every investigator knows, direct 
 questioning is worse than useless unless and until intimate 
 relations have been established. The people will resent in¬ 
 quisitiveness and will probably answer falsely. Infinite 
 tact and perseverance are required for successful progress. 
 
 (e) Make Accurate and Full Records .—When informa¬ 
 tion is gained in this way, the young missionary should 
 lose no time in making note of it. The value to himself 
 and to others of his studies at first hand will be in direct 
 proportion to the accuracy, fullness and preciseness of his 
 
74 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 record. The missionary should treat this part of his 
 work—and wherever a missionary finds himself among 
 people who have not been thoroughly studied he should 
 regard this study as part of his work—with the same 
 painstaking care that a chemist bestows upon a scientific 
 investigation. 
 
 (/) Treat Local Customs and Ideas with Respect .—The 
 novice should treat the religious ideas of his people seri¬ 
 ously with no air of superciliousness. It should be un¬ 
 necessary to suggest that he should make all his inquiries 
 in the spirit of the physician who studies anatomy and 
 physiology, in order that he may help and heal, not at all 
 in the spirit of the ghoul who studies the same things so 
 that he may best be in a position to harm and destroy. It 
 is best for the young missionary to refrain from any 
 hypercritical attitude, until he has established himself as 
 a friend and as an authority on native language and cus¬ 
 tom. No one should presume to denounce a custom, how¬ 
 ever evil it may seem to he, until it has been thoroughly 
 grasped in all its bearings. Even then, the separation of 
 the false elements from the true is better than sweeping 
 condemnation, for upon the true elements one can build. 
 
 (g) Seek for Points of Contact .—The young mission¬ 
 ary should be ever on the lookout for pegs in primitive 
 social and religious experience on which to hang the new 
 and better conceptions which Christianity offers. We 
 seek for these points of contact, and we do well; but when 
 all is said, the fact remains that there is no point of con¬ 
 tact like the warm human touch. When the missionary 
 meets the people as men and women, when he learns to 
 trust and love them, they respond. If he goes to them as 
 a being from another planet, is distant and aloof from 
 them, they will close up like a sensitive plant under one’s 
 finger. They may pay him deference because he is a 
 
CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO THE BANTU 75 
 
 white man and a missionary; they will not open their 
 hearts to him as confidant and friend. 
 
 ( h ) In Conclusion .—The sum of the whole matter is 
 this: One who longs to lead a people to God must win 
 their confidence and deserve their affection and respect. 
 When they are shown by such teachers the Christ in all 
 the fullness and glory of His personality, they too will 
 readily yield Him the frankincense of a loyal devotion. 
 Missionary experience repeatedly has proven that the 
 Christian message touches the heart of every human be¬ 
 ing. The backward peoples, once they understand it, will 
 be quick to accept the simple faith in Christ Jesus. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 HINTS FOR PRELIMINARY READING OR STUDY 
 ABOUT PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS 
 
 No amount of reading about a primitive religion can ever 
 take the place of a direct, friendly contact with the people 
 to whom it is a real religious experience, or of a study of 
 their religious ideas and practices on the ground. Never¬ 
 theless, the one who plans to go as a student or as a mis¬ 
 sionary to Africa or to the island world or to any region 
 where animistic influences predominate should use every 
 feasible means for gaining a preliminary knowledge of such 
 areas, of their peoples and of the prevailing type of religious 
 life. 
 
 First of all may well be the reading of some simple intro¬ 
 duction to primitive religions, such as the proper chapter 
 in Barton’s Religions of the World (No. I) 1 or Soper’s even 
 more recent volume (No. 24). The American or Canadian 
 student who wishes to go more deeply into detail may con¬ 
 sult Toy’s Introduction to the History of Religion (No. 25). 
 One or two volumes may be mentioned which give attention 
 to the general problems of primitive religion, such as 
 Marett’s The Threshold of Religion (No. 16). 
 
 A student going to Malaysia or southeastern Asia or to 
 Melanesia may profitably read Warneck’s famous book en¬ 
 titled in the American edition The Living Christ and Dy¬ 
 ing Heathenism , but known in England under the title The 
 Living Forces of the Gospel. It is a psychological study of 
 animism in the Indian archipelago based upon the writer’s 
 experience as a missionary. 
 
 The student going to any part of Africa may be advised 
 to read on general principles such books as Fraser’s Winning 
 of Primitive People (No. 5) and Dennett’s At the Back of 
 
 1 See the bibliography following. 
 
 77 
 
78 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 the Black Maris Mind (No. 4). He should also read one of 
 the monographs referred to in the following bibliography, 
 the one most closely relating to the region which he is to 
 enter. Such a thoughtful reading with a following up of 
 perplexing statements by a reading of the articles in Hast¬ 
 ings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (No. 6) will go 
 far toward introducing the young missionary to the religious 
 ideas of his people. 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Barton, George A. Religions of the World, Chicago, 
 
 University of Chicago Press, 1920. A singularly clear 
 introduction to the various religions, including living 
 faiths. 
 
 2. Bentley, W. H. Pioneering on the Congo. 2 vols. New 
 
 York, Revell, 1900. By an early but trustworthy writer. 
 Volume I contains an important discussion about “the 
 knowledge of God and fetichism.” See also Vol. II, 
 Appendix 2. 
 
 3. Callaway, H. The Religions System of the Amazulu. 
 
 London, Triibner, 1870. Incomplete and rare, but of 
 great value, containing Zulu texts with English transla¬ 
 tions. The most valuable sections discuss “LRikulun- 
 kulu,” pp. 1-104; “Ancestor Worship,” pp. 130-227; 
 “Diviners,” pp. 259-274; “Medical Magic and Witch¬ 
 craft,” pp. 417-448. 
 
 4. Dennett, R. E. At the Back of the Black Mans Mind. 
 
 New York, Macmillan, 1909. To be read with great 
 discrimination. Important, however, for the exposition 
 of Nyambe (Nzambi is Dennett’s spelling), Nbongoism 
 and Nkiciism. Unfortunately, a book which confuses 
 a beginner. 
 
 5. Fraser, Donald. Winning a Primitive People. New 
 
 York, Dutton, 1914. An interesting book which con¬ 
 tains a good chapter on the religion of the Tambuka 
 of British Central Africa. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 79 
 
 6. Hastings, J. (editor). Encyclopedia of Religion and 
 
 Ethics. New York, Scribner. This important publica¬ 
 tion contains many general articles and some special 
 articles of great value to the student of primitive re¬ 
 ligion. The most important of these are: 
 
 Yol. I— Africa, by A. H. Keane. 
 
 Ancestor Worship and Cult of the Dead. 
 {Introduction) , by W. Crooke. 
 
 Yol. II— Bantu and South Africa, by E. S. Hart- 
 land. 
 
 Vol. IY— Death and Disposal of the Dead {Intro¬ 
 ductory and Primitive), by E. S. 
 Hartland. 
 
 Demons and Spirits {Introductory), by 
 L. H. Gray. 
 
 Yol. Y— Ethics {Rudimentary), by R. R. Marett. 
 
 Fetishism {Introductory), by W. G. 
 Aston. 
 
 Yol. VI— God {Primitive and Savage), by A. Lang. 
 Yol. VIII— liana, by R. R. Marett. 
 
 Yol. IX— Nature, Primitive and Savage, by J. A. 
 MacCulloch. 
 
 Negroes and West Africa, by A. F. Mock- 
 ler-Ferryman. 
 
 Nyanjas, by A. Hetherwick. 
 
 Nylka, by A. Werner. 
 
 Orenda, by H. B. Alexander. 
 
 Vol. X— Religion, by Stanley A. Cook. 
 
 Secret Societies {African), by N. W. 
 Thomas. 
 
 Vol. XI— Soul {Primitive), by H. B. Alexander. 
 Vol. XII— Tabu, by R. R. Marett. 
 
 Totemism, by E. Sidney Hartland. 
 Tutelary Gods, by E. 0. James. 
 
 Worship {Primitive), by H. B. Alex¬ 
 ander. 
 
 7. Gouldsbury, C., and Sheane, H. The Great Plateau of 
 
 Northern Rhodesia. London, Macmillan, 1911. Used 
 as a text-book for British officials administering the 
 country. Chapter VI upon “Animism and Witchcraft” 
 is especially valuable. 
 
80 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 8. Hobley, G. W. Bantu Beliefs and Magic. London, H. F. 
 
 and G. Witherby, 1922. As provincial governor Mr. 
 Hobley studied for many years customs and beliefs of 
 the Kikiyu and Kamba tribes over whom he ruled in 
 Kenya Colony. It is strongly commended by Sir J. G. 
 Frazer, a foremost authority on primitive religion. 
 
 9. Johnston, Sir H. H. George Grenfell and the Congo. 
 2 vols. London, Hutchinson, 1908. Sir Harry John¬ 
 ston is a prolific writer on Africa. As a British admin¬ 
 istrator he has had a peculiarly valuable experience in 
 various sections of Africa and ranks high as an anthro¬ 
 pologist and ethnologist. One who wishes to know Af¬ 
 rica in general will be well advised to read The Uganda 
 Protectorate, 1902, and British Central Africa, 1897, or 
 any other available volumes by him. 
 
 10. Junod, H. A. The Life of a South African Tribe. New 
 York, Macmillan, 1912-13. A valuable study of the 
 Thonga people of Portuguese East Africa by a pains¬ 
 taking and scholarly missionary investigator. In Yol. 
 II, Part VI, is a very full description of their religious 
 beliefs. 
 
 11. Kidd, Dudley. The Essential Kafir. London, A. and 
 C. Black, 1904. Gives a vivid description of a witch 
 doctor, his methods and influence. 
 
 12. Kingsley, M. H. Travels in West Africa. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1897. This brilliant woman gives in Chap¬ 
 ters XII-XVI a very full account of fetichism as she 
 saw it in the region just north of the equator. 
 
 13. - West African Studies. 2d ed., 1901. New York, 
 
 Macmillan. The chapters on fetichism of this later book 
 are also quite valuable. 
 
 14. Leroy, Alexander. The Religion of the Primitives. 
 New A r ork, Macmillan, 1922. A discriminating, con¬ 
 crete and yet philosophical discussion mainly of African 
 religion by a Roman Catholic authority of forty-five 
 years’ experience. 
 
 15. Macdonald, Duff. Africans ; or the Heart of Heathen 
 Africa. 2 vols. London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 
 1882. Chapters III, IY and XV of Volume I contain 
 an account of the religion of the l r aos in the Lake 
 Nyasa region. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 81 
 
 16. Marett, Robert E. The Threshold of Religion (2d 
 ed.). New York, Macmillan, 1914. A short series of 
 essays on rudimentary religious experience. Most valu¬ 
 able. 
 
 17. Nassau, R. H. Fetichism in West Africa. New York, 
 Scribner, 1904. One of the fullest and most authorita¬ 
 tive accounts in English of fetichism in Africa. It gives 
 the results of forty years of observation and study. 
 
 18. Roscoe, J. The Baganda. New York, Macmillan, 1911. 
 
 19. - The Northern Bantu. Cambridge, University 
 
 Press, 1915. 
 
 20. - The Soul of Central Africa. London, Cassell, 
 
 1922. The author was for some time a resident of 
 Uganda, and is now a specialist upon anthropology at 
 Cambridge University. His writings are authoritative. 
 
 21. Routledge, W. S., and Routledge, R. With a Prehis¬ 
 toric People. London, E. Arnold, 1910. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Routledge spent many years in British East Africa and 
 were scientifically prepared for their work. Part III 
 discusses the religion of the Akikuyu. 
 
 22. Smith, E. W., and Dale, A. M. The Ila-Speaking Peo¬ 
 ples of Northern Rhodesia. 2 vols. New York, Mac¬ 
 millan, 1920. A very complete and highly interesting 
 study of the Ba-ila, worked out in very full detail, and 
 recognized as one of the authoritative books on African 
 tribal life and belief. 
 
 23. Smith, E. W. Handbook of the Ila< Language. London, 
 Frowde, 1907. A work of much value which contains 
 abundant material relating to religion. 
 
 24. Soper, E. D. The Religions of Mankind. New York, 
 Abingdon Press, 1921. A very valuable and clear in¬ 
 troduction to the study of religions including those of 
 today. 
 
 25. Toy, C. H. Introduction to the History of Religion. 
 New York, Scribner, 1910. An authoritative but not 
 very readable introduction to the phenomena of religion. 
 
 26. Warneck, J. The Living Christ and Dying Heathen¬ 
 ism. New York, Revell, 1909. A study of animism and 
 the Christian approach to the primitive mind. 
 
 27. Weeks, J. H. Among Congo Cannibals. London, 
 Seeley, 1913. 
 
82 
 
 THE RELIGION OF LOWER RACES 
 
 28. Weeks, J. H. Among the Primitive Bakongo. London, 
 Seeley, 1914. The author’s thirty years of close intimacy 
 with the people of the Congo region makes his discussions 
 authoritative. 
 
 29. Werner, A. The Natives of British Central Africa. 
 London, Constable, 1906. The author is perhaps the 
 most learned woman among those who have in Africa 
 studied the peoples, languages and religions. See espe¬ 
 cially Chapters III and IV. 
 
 30. Willoughby, W. C. Pace Problems in the New Africa. 
 Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1923. An attempt to 
 show the true inwardness of African life. Very valuable. 
 
 31. Crawford, Dan. Back to the Long Grass: My Link 
 with Livingstone. London, Hodder; New York, Doran, 
 1922. A rather erratic volume, but containing inter¬ 
 esting allusions to many of the Bantu customs and ideas 
 referred to in this volume. 
 
 32. Molema, S. M. The Bantu Past and Present. Edin¬ 
 burgh, W. Green, 1920. A historical and ethnographical 
 study of the native races of South Africa by one who 
 was born a Bantu. 
 

 
— 
 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4J 
 
 , < 
 
 • ^ 
 
 ' i- £XUQ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 n.i,. ; l 'ii 
 
 r* 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •jraiN^^i 
 
 > 1995.1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f&? 
 
 
 
 "-ifv? 
 
 TJ Ui 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 Apr 0:, 
 
 199 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 OCT o 
 
 ^o_2Q 
 
 
 
 
 
 Q «WWW 
 
 
 
 FEB 0 V 
 
 ZUuo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $>