r48 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



be considered here, and a serious attempt ouglit to be made to grasp 

 its strange laws. It will be very soon transformed under white 

 influences, as nothing is more fluid than sound, and its characteristics 

 lost. The study of native music would consist of two parts : a 

 description of their instruments and a trustworthv collection of their 

 songs. We shall speak later on about the best way of preser\ing 

 those so striking and difficult melodies. 



Would it be unwise to add to this part of the book dealing with 

 the arts and crafts, a resume of the medical art of the natives? They 

 possess certainly objecti\-e therapeutic means. But as they are 

 intimately connected with superstitions, the common idea is that thev 

 all are but charms. Such a view is erroneous. There are a number 

 of real, powerful drugs in the native pharmacopaeia, and al.so a number 

 of therapeutic proceedings which are interesting to observe, and which 

 are the result of a long experience on the part of the '/nganga." 

 They must certainly find their place in a complete ethnographical 

 study. 



The last part of the book would be entitled : Tlie religions life 

 and the superstitions. Here the observer would have to be more 

 careful, more intelligent, more acute than on any other subject. He 

 would have to choose wisely the native informers, but he would be 

 rewarded by an ample harvest of facts and ideas and conceptions, 

 and he would find the native mind swarming with strange, but in a 

 way, reasonable fancies. The ancestrolatry is the best known part 

 of the religion of the Bantu : The notion of the ghosts, the primitive 

 worship which they receive, the dreadful legends which surround 

 their apparitions, the priesthood and the sacrifices, the intimate con- 

 nection between the worship and the national life of the tribe, all 

 these questions might be treated in relation with ancestrolatry. But 

 the ancestor worship by no means exhausts the religion of the Bantu. 

 There are other sets of intuitions or beliefs which are of a more 

 hidden, confused nature, but in which we certainlv find some traces 

 of Monotheism or Pantheism. They are generally connected with 

 the lightning, the fall of the rain, or other cosmic phenomena. It 

 would be highly desirable to have a true account of these religious 

 ideas in every tribe, as their comparison might lead to unexpected 

 and very important discoveries. 



Totcmism also has left traces more or less easy to recognise 

 amongst the various Bantu tribes. The totem is not worshipped any 

 more in most cases, but it certainlv was in former times, and it would 

 be important to note the relations between totem worship and ancestro- 

 latry, and how, eventually, the first evolved into the second. 



At any rate, students of Bantu conceptions ought to arrive at a 

 real grasp of their animistic system, and they would in that way get 

 the key to both the religion and the superstitions. Under the heading 

 superstitions we would consider those spiritual theories which are 

 not connected with worship, especially the most dreaded witchcraft, 

 which has acquired on the Bantu mind a power perhaps unparalleled 

 in any other nation. The possessions, that is, the demoniac 



