86 



RELIGION. 



in honour of the old people (ancestors), food- 

 offerings at graves, and fires lighted there on 

 cold wet nights, evidence the European's, the 

 East African's,^ or the American's belief in 

 futurity : as the act proves it is a belief in 

 presentity, and after a few years the ceremony 

 showing ' a continuation of relationship between 

 the living and the dead, is always disused. 

 Savages cannot separate the idea of an immortal 

 soul from a mortal body : can we wonder at this 

 when the wisest of the civilized have not yet 

 agreed upon the subject ? The characteristic 

 of the venerative faculty amongst savages and 

 barbarians is ever irreverence : they cannot raise 

 themselves to the idea of a Deity, and they 

 blaspheme as if speaking of a man and an enemy. 

 The Wanyika horrify the Moslems by their free 

 language concerning Allah. So King Raddma 

 I. of Madagascar, a comparatively civilized 

 man, who attempted to regulate his forces upon 



^ I say East African because the western regions, especially 

 Fanti-land and Dahome, believe in a Hades, or world of shades, 

 which is apparently derived from Egypt. Of this I have 

 spoken in my Mission to Dahome. Vitruvius exactly explains 

 what my meaning is in the celebrated passage, Virgo civis 

 Corinthia, jam matrem nuptiis, implicito morbo decessit ; post 

 sepulturam ejus quibus ea viva poculis delectabatur, nutrix 

 collecta et composita in calatho pertulit ad monumentum, et 

 in aummo collocavit. 



