viii PREFACE 



entitled The Names of Animals in the Bantu 

 Languages writes : 



" Van Gennep lays stress on the importance of 

 studying the noun classes of the Bantu languages 

 from a new point of view. The ideas underlying this 

 arrangement have long been a puzzle to philologists 



Most attempts in this direction have been 



more or less fantastic in character and were, M. Van 

 Gennep thinks, foredoomed to failure because they 

 approached the question from a purely European point 

 of view. The solution, he suggests, may lie along the 

 lines indicated by Mr. Dennett in At the Back of the 

 Black Mans Mind (now supplemented by Nigerian 

 Studies] viz. : in discovering the logical system of the 

 Bantu the principle on which they classify the facts 

 of the visible world so far as these are known to them. 

 ' Ce systeme de classification des choses de 1'univers, 

 phenomene de 1'ordre social, entraine une classification 

 correspondante des mots designant ces choses.' 



" We may remark, in passing, that considerable 

 light is likely to be thrown on this subject by M. 

 Torday's researches among the Bushongo, whose 

 system of sacred animals, intimately connected with 

 their social organisation, seems to complete and 

 explain the information obtained by Mr. Dennett from 

 the Bavili, and the hints as to the Warrendi contained 

 in P. Van der Burght's work, to which M. Van Gennep 

 refers at the end of his Essay." (Revue des Iddes, 

 January i5th, 1907.) 



I have for the last thirty years been deeply 

 interested in the working of the mind of the Black 



