PREFACE 



I CANNOT help referring to the sympathetic and 

 learned review of At the Back of the Black Mans 

 Mind by Dr. A. Van Gennep in the Revue de 

 .FHistoire des Religions. On page 224, however, he 

 states that Miss Werner, in a review of the same book, 

 had been clever enough to point out that there were a 

 number of discordances between my Xivili and 

 Bentley's Congo. On this occasion I have not found 

 it necessary to use Xivili and have gone to Bentley 

 for my words, hoping in this way, by using a language 

 the dictionary of which is easily obtained, my work 

 may be of more general interest and more easily 

 criticised. Mistakes are sure to be found, but they 

 will some day be corrected, and I can only hope that 

 such as they are they will not interfere very much 

 with the end Van Gennep, Miss Werner, and others 

 have in common with myself, i.e. the philological 

 foundation of the categories I have noted as existing 

 at the back of the Black man's mind. 



Miss Werner, who was at one time inclined to look 

 upon my work as fantastic, is now greatly helping to 

 push on Van Gennep's endeavour, and in her paper 



