AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY. 401 



not uncommon, but they pass away as suddenly as they come on. 

 Lasting friendships are not known. Relations apparently the closest 

 are suddenly broken up or changed into enmity by the most insignifi- 

 cant causes. 



Melancholy tones can hardly be attributed to the negro spirit, and 

 I would have averred that suicide was inconceivable among them, had 

 I not learned from trustworthy sources that instances of it had oc- 

 curred. These were, however, only among more nearly civilized indi- 

 viduals. The ruling passions of the race concern the gratification of 

 pleasure and greed for property. The most serious troubles originate 

 in these spheres. The theft of a goat will afford a chief a more ready 

 provocation for war than a box on the ear. The ideas of honor and 

 manliness are almost wholly wanting, at least among the common men. 

 Blows are unpleasant to them only in so far as they cause pain. They 

 will bear the cuffs of their lord with resignation and as matters of 

 course, as a part of the contract, while they will most likely toward 

 strangers put themselves timidly and passively in an attitude of de- 

 fense. 



The question, " Has the negro a religion ? " can not be answered at 

 once either affirmatively or negatively. It must first be made clear 

 what is to be understood by religion. If it be defined as a system of 

 conceptions, aspirations, hopes, and apprehensions, and the moral pre- 

 cepts suggested by their operation, then the negro has no religion. If 

 we call a confused mixture of vague wants and superstitious impulses 

 a religion, then he has one. We might, perhaps, say more correctly 

 that the common human weaknesses which are among ordinary motives 

 of religion feelings of anxiety, longings, illusions, fancies, and the 

 corresponding efforts to get light are not wanting in the negro, but 

 he lacks the deep reflective power to build up a symmetrical structure 

 out of his theological raw material. As the negro is in the habit of 

 dreaming of his dead relatives, and is very apt to imagine that this or 

 that dead person allows him no rest in the night, and must be silenced 

 by propitiatory offerings, he is not very far from believing in the im- 

 mortality of the soul. I have frequently inquired of the most intelli- 

 gent blacks under my command, of those who had been baptized and 

 considered themselves Christians, what they thought of their future 

 after death, and have never received any other answer than that "then 

 life will be at an end, and we shall be buried in the ground and eaten 

 by worms." 



They have a word, nsambi, which might be translated by " God." 

 The following are examples of the way it is used : Dhdee dia nsambi, 

 God's sky ; Kalunga ka nsambi, God's sea ; dikembi dia nsambi, God's 

 sun ; dikua dia nsambi, God's axe the name of a grass that cuts very 

 badly ; the name nsambi is also applied to the mantis, or praying 

 insect. Personally and practically however, this nsambi, as my Au- 

 gustus once told me, is of no interest to the negroes. He does them 



TOL. XXIII. 26 



