Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/490

 448 Reviews.

all motion, all difficulties, dangers, and calamities, that do matter and must be thought about, for they are the real things whether ' they live for thing or no.' " She then proceeds to discuss and justify her opinion that there is no ancestor-worship, properly so called, in Western Africa.

An important chapter follows on the various schools of Fetish, already discussed to some extent in the Introduction to Mr. 'DQunQli's Folklore of the Fjort. Of these, "four main schools," disregarding subdivisions, are enumerated, namely, the Tshi and Ewe school, described by Sir A. B. Ellis, the Calabar school, the Mpongwe school, and Nkissism or the Fjort school. Rightly to distinguish these varieties of what is essentially the same religion is to throw light upon many dark places and to explain many seeming inconsistencies in the accounts of travellers.

Miss Kingsley next passes to the relations between Fetish and Witchcraft. Here her observations in the previous work have brought her athwart the theory of Sir Alfred Lyall and Professor Jevons that witchcraft is ab origine something quite disparate from religion, that it is in fact rudimentary science. She points out, however, that the difference between a witch and a priest or any such person is, in West Africa, simply the intention of the practices. Both deal with spirits, but the witch in dealing with them has an evil intent, an intent to injure or slay others : " he is just a bad man too much, who has gone and taken up with spirits for ille- gitimate purposes." It is very much an affair of definitions. Sir Alfred Lyell might perhaps deny that this was witchcraft at all in his sense of the word. It is arguable that it would cover a very large part of the European superstition ; but it would not cover the whole of sympathetic and mimetic magic. Into the relations between these great provinces of witchcraft and religion Miss Kingsley does not enter, and I shall imitate her discretion.

Several points in connection with the practice of Witchcraft and Fetish are next discussed. Two chapters follow on African Medicine and the Witch Doctor. These contain incidentally a body of valuable information on various customs and on the native psycho- logy. Limitations of space prevent me from doing more than drawing attention to their importance.

Later in the volume is a chapter deserving the close considera- tion of every one interested in the races of the lower culture. It is entitled The Clash of Cultures. Here the authoress insists on