682 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Dyaks place on the path to their farms, St. John says &quot; These 

 figures are said to be inhabited each by a spirit.&quot; 



Because of the indwelling doubles of the dead, such images 

 are in many cases propitiated. Speaking of the idols made 

 by the people west of Lake Nyassa, Livingstone says &quot; they 

 present pombe, flour, bhang, tobacco, and light a five for 

 them to smoke by. They represent the departed father or 

 mother, and it is supposed that they are pleased with the 

 offerings made to their representatives . . . names of dead 

 chiefs are sometimes given to them.&quot; Bastian tells us 

 that a negress in Sierra Leone had in her room four idols 

 whose mouths she daily daubed with maize and palrn-oil : 

 one for herself, one for her dead husband, and one for each 

 of her children. Often the representation is extremely rude. 

 The Damaras have &quot; an image, consisting of two pieces of 

 wood, supposed to represent the household deity, or rather 

 the deified parent,&quot; which is brought out on certain occa 

 sions. And of the Bhils we read- &quot; Their usual cere 

 monies consist in merely smearing the idol, which is seldom 

 anything but a shapeless stone, with vermilion and red lead, 

 or oil ; offering, with protestations and a petition, an animal 

 and some liquor.&quot; 



Here we see the transition to that form of fetichism 

 in which an object having but a rude likeness to a human 

 being, or no likeness at all, is nevertheless supposed to be 

 inhabited by a ghost. I may add that the connexion 

 between development of the ghost- theory and development 

 of fetichism, is instructively shown by the absence of both 

 from an African people described by Thomson : 



&quot; The Wahebe appear to be as free from superstitious notions as an? 

 tribe I have seen . . . there was an entire absence of the usual signs of 

 that fetichism, which is so prevalent elsewhere. They seem, however, to 

 Lave no respect for their dead ; the bodies being generally thrown into 

 the jungle to be eaten by the hyenas.&quot; 



And just the same connexion of facts is shown in the 

 account of the Masai more recently given by him. 



In several ways there arises identification of ancestors 



