62 Proceedings of the Roijal Irish Academy. 



Black PhUosophi/. — The black mind works on the principle of iiesemblances, 

 and*" the black man r^ards everything as male or female. He sars, as a 

 woman's body is difierent from a man's, so a woman's moi^s must be difierent 

 fiom his. Her intellectual and spiritual outlook he also i-egards as diHerent, 

 which he expi-esses by saj-ing that is " woman palaver, and man no fit to 

 nnderstand that" It is the cleavage of the sex idea that Dennett' sets forth 

 in his sixfold formula of genetic relations in the mind of the Bavili. The 

 Bavili make a clear distinction between the superior and the inferior, the 

 positive and n^ative, powers, the husband and wife ideas of opposites, so that 

 any displacement of the social e<iuilibrium is to the black man productive of 

 causes, male and female, which, interacting on each other, produce a dis- 

 tnrbanc-e throwing male and female effects on opposite sides, as in a woman's 

 palaver and man's palaver, the result of which is a product — namely, an 

 agreement which is regarded as also male and female, from which is produced 

 concord or unity. 



To attain this unity the black mind casts about for something more or less 

 desirable, of which it makes an immediate surrender, so that some greater 

 good may be attained- This is the essence of sacrifice. 



The sharing of a common substance as food, as illustrated by the cannibal 

 feasts, unites those who partake of it in a common life, as all those taking 

 part in the c-eremony have in the most literal way absorbed part of the 

 victim's life into themselves. Through this community of life is discovered 

 an influence — ^namely, medicine — ^whieh will produce a revelation of those 

 munamfested amorphous powers, male and female, symbolized by the Borfimor, 

 the sharing of the sacrifice with which will produce atonement, and therefore 

 harmony. This notion of atonement and communion are in all primitive faiths 

 bound up together, and the word " atonement " bears its original meaning on 

 its face — at-one-ment, restitution, the bringing again into harmony. Such a 

 ceremony expresses the establishment of a bond of common life between the 

 worshippers and their god, whereby the worshippers can bring to themselves 

 some of the power inherent in the god, which to the West African mind is 

 manifested in the Borfimor. In other words, the Borfimor has become a 

 ffitish. 



Feti^ — ^We have seen the process of making the fetish ; but the human 

 elements differ in various places in accordance with the object to be produced. 

 The liver is the seat of valour ; the ears the seat of wisdom ; the eye the seat 

 of power, influence ; the heart and brain seats of cunning and other great 

 qualities, notably courage, wisdom; the genitals, seat of production and 

 fertility ; the blood, the seat of life. Human fat has wonderful properties, 



I Opm eit., pp. 104 and 112. 



