28 NOTES ON WEST AFRICAN CATEGORIES 



which is in the trees, and that which is in man the 

 representative of the animal kingdom ; but these 

 sources of life are rather the ancestors of the native 

 than the intrinsic life of the stones or trees them- 

 selves. The stone or tree is, in many cases, to the 

 soul of the ancestor what the body is to the life and 

 soul of living man. 



I have sketched the primitive African animated 

 by the desire to eat, to drink, and to copulate ; 

 and I have briefly shown how his thoughts became 

 associated with the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, 

 which he had come to connect with his desires. The 

 desire for existing things and the desire for copula- 

 tion and the means for satisfying these desires were 

 present to primitive man long before he had come to 

 see any connection between procreation and produc- 

 tion ; and it was only after he had stored observa- 

 tions of the growth of plants and the order of the 

 seasons, and had drawn conclusions from his observa- 

 tions, that he came to grasp any idea of this 

 connection. 



