Knows you can get another man for a
consideration to kill or harm a third party, and so he thinks that,
for a consideration, you can also get one of these superhuman
beings, which we call gods or devils, but which the African regards
in another light, to do so.
A certain set of men and women then specialise off to study how
these spirits can be managed, and so arises a priesthood; and the
priests, or medicine men as they are called in their earliest forms,
gradually, for their own ends, elaborate and wrap round their
profession with ritual and mystery.
The savage is also conscious of another great set of phenomena
which, he soon learns, take no interest in human affairs. The sun
which rises and sets, the moon which changes, the tides which come
and go: - what do they care? Nothing; and what is more, sacrifice
to them what you may, you cannot get them to care about you and your
affairs, and so the savage turns his attention to those other
spirits that do take only too much interest, as is proved by those
unexpected catastrophes; and, as their actions show, these spirits
are all malignant, so he deals with them just as he would deal with
a bad man whom he was desirous of managing.
