172 



W. HOSTE, B.A., OX FETICHISM — 



tunities of studying the subject on its native soil as he has had, 

 through relatives who were missionaries on the "West Coast of Africa, 

 and other missionaries who througrh them became mv friends, mv 

 knowledge is more nearly first-hand than most. I may mention that 

 one of these friends is Dr. E. Hamil Xassau, from whose book on 

 fetichism Mr. Hoste quotes. I can say that I can corroborate most 

 of Mr. Hoste's statements. The cases in which I am not quite in 

 agreement with Mr. Hoste may well be due to my imperfect under- 

 standing either of what Mr. Hoste has .said or of what I had heard 

 from my friends. Like Mr. Hoste, I think the religious history of the 

 race before Abraham was not of the evolution of higher morality 

 and loftier thoughts of God, but of degeneration in every direction : 

 " God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many 

 inventions.' Yet it seems to me that there is a place for evolution 

 — not as taking the place of the Divine Reason, but as expressing 

 the method by which that Reason manifests itself. 



" In confirmation of what Mr. Hoste maintains, that behind and 

 above the fetiches and the spirits which inhabit them the negroes 

 of the West Coast of Africa believe in a great god, I may relate what 

 my cousin, the late Dr. W. C. Thomson, missionary in Old Calabar, 

 told me. He had been telling an old Chief the disasters that in 

 consequence of earthquake had befallen a district somewhat to the 

 north. The old man, when he heard, looked out from under the 

 verandah of his house to the blue sky, and said, What terrible 

 things that great face works.' E\^dently he regarded the sky as 

 the face of the great god. 



Personally, I was not aware that the fetich spirit was regarded 

 as having lived. My impression has been that they were elemental 

 spirits, who took up their abode in any odd object, stick or stone, 

 tree or rock. That might be urged as a distinction between the 

 spirits evoked by the modern spiritualists, or, as Mr. Hoste calls 

 them, spiritists, and the fetich worshippers. I do not think that 

 these frequenters of seances associate the spirits with any special 

 object. That also might be brought forward as a distinction to 

 separate the fashionable spiritists from the fetich worshippers. A 

 thing which seems to me to be as much akin to fetichism as modern 

 spiritualism is the habit of having mascots. There is no worship 

 given them, yet somehow the possession of them is supposed to 

 secure success. The whole idea of luck is purely superstitious. 



