56 Proceedings of fhe Roi/al Irhh Academy. 



exercises mth the influence of the chief iu any paramount chiefdom is a bad 

 one, and should not be allowed by any Couit of Justice, because its movement 

 is all like violent robbery, because after apprehending people they first extort 

 every farthing fiom their pockets and plunder them. It is a most wicked 

 society. So far as my experience goes there is no one they cast a lot upon 

 which cannot be well tried and beaten with sticks, di-agged, wounded. These 

 few native explanations will, I expect, assist the Crown a bit." 



Wed Afrkan, Bdigions contain Bemimnts of older Rdigions. — Fetish 

 worship, now confined to the southern coast, at one time extended far to the 

 north of the Kiger. At the present day, all over Guinea can be seen a 

 succession of religions: on the coast the cannibal animistic, and fetish 

 worshippei's ; fiu'ther north in the hinterland there are survivals of an Astarte- 

 like goddess-worship and the worship of ancestoi-s, stocks, and stones, such as 

 appear to have formed part of the worship of the Mali people, are to this day 

 the representatives of the god of the Angass ; and behind this pagan woi-ship 

 again is Mahommedanism. Thus the higher human type has always driven 

 further south before it the lower, weaker, and more degraded negro races. 



The natural religion of all the African tribes is naturalistic and animistic ; 

 that is, it rests not only on a fii'm belief in spirits and powers which, because 

 they are capricious, must be wheedled, and because they are often hostile 

 must be appeased, but also on a belief that the things around are Hving, not 

 because they are the abode of spii'its but because of their own inherent or self- 

 powers. The animist does not think, and has little conception either of his 

 own spirit, except that it is that in him which does things in his dreams, or of 

 the relation of these unknown powers and spirits to his own spirit. He only 

 knows ihey exist : but what he fears — and fear becomes his normal religious 

 condition — is the physical harm they may bring upon his body or his 

 property. 



Animists generally are found to have a belief of varying intensity and 

 effectiveness in a supreme being, creator and father of all, hardly yet clothed 

 with individual attributes, and a belief in a future existence for the souL 

 They may hold these at present to very little pui-pose ; by believing that the 

 soul is immortal they live in perpetual fear of the existent spirits of an older 

 generation. 



Islamism has shown powers of adaptation, and has grafted itself on the 

 animism of Africa. Thi-oughout the Sien-a Leone Protectorate Mahonmie- 

 danism has made, and is steadily making, progress, acting distinctly for good, 

 by putting down human sacrifice and replaciug a fetish worship by a lofty 

 monotheism. The faith of Islam with its polygamy and patriarchal form of 

 government suits the people, and presents its truths in a form they understand ; 



