AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY. 403 



a kind of a rattle, utters some appropriate sentence, while the peti- 

 tioner repeats it in unison with him. Particularly well-trained pray- 

 ing-masters deliver themselves of the prayer in a high falsetto, which 

 appears to them to have a more insinuating, and therefore more 

 effective, sound. There is no real priest class. There are negroes 

 accustomed to daily religious exercises, like devotees among us ; but 

 of earnestness and devotion, in the sense in which we understand 

 those terms, not a trace can be observed. The cheerfulness of the 

 negro temperament is never suppressed. If a person happens to come 

 upon any of their religious exercises, and betrays an expression of 

 amusement, the whole company of worshipers will break out into 

 laughter, and be glad that their demeanor has been found so pleasing. 

 Aside from the fear of wicked fetiches, which is a great source of 

 trouble, and from the pleasure of trading, which occasionally carries 

 him hither and thither, the life of the negro passes with a uniform 

 freedom from care. He is born, brought up, takes a wife, begets 

 offspring, grows old, and dies, without having undergone any train- 

 ing, gone to school, had to choose a calling, or been subject to any 

 other kind of anxiety. He has no regularly recurring festivals ; but 

 the revelries on the occasion of a death in the connection or in the 

 circle of neighbors and friends are often protracted through many 

 days or even weeks. How many years old he is he neither knows nor 

 cares. 



A system for computing time can hardly be predicated of such a 

 people ; but they have a kind of superficial calendar of the months, 

 which they make to help regulate their agricultural operations. The 

 Angola negroes count the moons during the period of cultivation, 

 and indicate them by numbers from one to ten. During the dry 

 season, when agriculture is dormant, the calendar also is asleep. In 

 August, when the distant lightning announces the approach of the 

 rainy season, the women start out to clear the fields for the crops ; and, 

 as soon as the ground has been wet by the first rains, they plant their 

 ground-nuts. The moon in which this is done is the first. The divis- 

 ions of the day are measured off according to the place of the sun in 

 the sky. 



The often asked and variously answered question of the capacity 

 of the negro for civilization applies in an equal degree to him and to 

 all other savage people. It arises more frequently with respect to the 

 negro, only because the attention of philanthropic men has been more 

 prominently directed to him. It must be answered in his favor. The 

 negro undoubtedly possesses all the capacity for education and civili- 

 zation to at least as great an extent as our primitive ancestors had it. 

 But, just as our ancestors could not at once and immediately emerge 

 from barbarism into our present conditions of many-sided development 

 and refinement, so we have no reason to expect that the African sav- 

 ages can, in one or two generations, reach the standard of modern 



