I beg you to understand that I make no
pretension to a thorough knowledge of Fetish ideas; I am only on the
threshold. "Ich weiss nicht all doch viel ist mir bekannt," as
Faust said - and, like him after he had said it, I have got a lot to
learn.
I do not intend here to weary you with more than a small portion of
even my present knowledge, for I have great collections of facts
that I keep only to compare with those of other hunters of the wild
idea, and which in their present state are valueless to the cabinet
ethnologist. Some of these may be rank lies, some of them mere
individual mind-freaks, others have underlying them some idea I am
not at present in touch with.
The difficulty of gaining a true conception of the savage's real
idea is great and varied. In places on the Coast where there is, or
has been, much missionary influence the trouble is greatest, for in
the first case the natives carefully conceal things they fear will
bring them into derision and contempt, although they still keep them
in their innermost hearts; and in the second case, you have a set of
traditions which are Christian in origin, though frequently altered
almost beyond recognition by being kept for years in the atmosphere
of the African mind.
