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THE LAKE EEGIOJS T S OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Fetissism is the adoration, or rather the propitiation, 

 of natural objects, animate and inanimate, to which 

 certain mysterious influences are attributed. It admits 

 neither god, nor angel, nor devil ; it ignores the very- 

 alphabet of revealed or traditionary religion — a crea- 

 tion, a resurrection, a judgment-day, a soul or a spirit, a 

 heaven or a hell. A modified practical atheism is thus 

 the prominent feature of the superstition. Though in- 

 stinctively conscious of a being above them, the Africans 

 have as yet failed to grasp the idea: in their feeble 

 minds it is an embryo rather than a conception — at the 

 best a vague god, without personality, attributes, or pro- 

 vidence. They call that being Mulungu, the Uhlunga 

 of the Kafirs, and the Utika of the Hottentots. The 

 term, however, may mean a ghost, the firmament, or the 

 sun ; a man will frequently call himself Mulungu, and 

 even Mulungu Mbaya, the latter word signifying bad or 

 wicked. In the language of the Wamasai "Ai," or 

 with the article "Engai" — the Creator — is feminine, 

 the god and rain being synonymous. 



The Fetiss superstition is African, but not confined 

 to Africa. The faith of ancient Egypt, the earliest 

 system of profane belief known to man, with its Triad 

 denoting the various phases and powers of nature, was 

 essentially fetissist; whilst in the Syrian mind dawned 

 at first the idea of " Melkart," a god of earth, and his 

 Baalim, angels, viceregents, or local deities. But 

 generally the history of religions proves that when man, 

 whether degraded from primal elevation or elevated 

 from primal degradation, has progressed a step beyond 

 atheism — the spiritual state of the lowest savagery — he 

 advances to the modification called Fetissism, the con- 

 dition of the infant mind of humanity. According 

 to the late Col. Van Kennedy ; " such expressions as 



