Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/264

 and that is that the souls of men exist before birth as well as after death. This is indeed, as far as I have been able to find out, a doctrine universally held by the West African tribes, but among the M'pongwe there is this modification in it, which agrees strangely well with the idea I found regarding reincarnated diseases, existent among the Okỹon tribes (pure negroes). The malevolent minor spirits are capable of being born with, what we will call, a man's soul, as well as going in with the man's soul during sleep. For example, an Olâgâ may be born with a man and that man will thereby be born mad; he may at any period of his life, given certain conditions become possessed by an evil spirit, Onlogho Abambo, Iniembe, Nkandada, and become mad, or ill; but if he is born mad, or sickly, one of the evil spirits such as an Olágâ or an Ibambo, the soul of a man that has not been buried properly, has been born with him.

The rest of the M'pongwe fetish is on broad lines common to other tribes, so I relegate it to the general collection of notes on fetish. M'pongwe jurisprudence is founded on the same ideas as those on which West African jurisprudence at large is founded, but it is so elaborated that it would be desecration to sketch it. It requires a massive monograph.