They no longer see through a glass darkly; nothing with
them is left vague or undetermined. Continuation, resurrection,
eternity are hereditary and habitual ideas; they have become
almost inseparable and congenital parts of the mental system.
This condition renders it nearly as difficult for us to
understand the vagueness and mistiness of savage and unwritten
creeds, as to penetrate into the modus agendi of animal instinct.
And there is yet another obstacle in dealing with such people,
their intense and childish sensitiveness and secretiveness. They
are not, as some have foolishly supposed, ashamed of their tenets
or their practices, but they are unwilling to speak about them.
They fear the intentions of the cross-questioner, and they hold
themselves safest behind a crooked answer. Moreover, every
Mpongwe is his own "pontifex maximus," and the want, or rather
the scarcity, of a regular priesthood must promote independence
and discrepancy of belief.
Whilst noticing the Fetishism of the Gaboon I cannot help
observing, by the way, how rapidly the civilization of the
nineteenth century is redeveloping, together with the "Religion
of Humanity" the old faith, not of Paganism, but of Cosmos, of
Nature; how directly it is, in fact, going back to its oldergods.
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