"Go away, we don't
want you." "Come not into this house, this village, or its
plantations." He knows from experience that the spirits pay little
heed to these objurgations, and as they are the people who must be
attended to, he develops a cult whereby they may be managed, used,
and understood. This cult is what we call witchcraft.
As I am not here writing a complete work on Fetish I will leave Nzam
on one side, and turn to the inferior spirits. These are almost all
malevolent; sometimes they can be coaxed into having creditable
feelings, like generosity and gratitude, but you can never trust
them. No, not even if you are yourself a well-established medicine
man. Indeed they are particularly dangerous to medicine men, just
as lions are to lion tamers, and many a professional gentleman in
the full bloom of his practice, gets eaten up by his own particular
familiar which he has to keep in his own inside whenever he has not
sent it off into other people's.
I am indebted to the Reverend Doctor Nassau for a great quantity of
valuable information regarding Bantu religious ideas - information
which no one is so competent to give as he, for no one else knows
the West Coast Bantu tribes with the same thoroughness and sympathy.
He has lived among them since 1851, and is perfectly conversant with
their languages and culture, and he brings to bear upon the study of
them a singularly clear, powerful, and highly-educated intelligence.
