view on Fetish in West Africa. I was of course fully aware of the accepted view of the innate antagonism between religion and witchcraft when I published in a deliberately scattered form some of my observations on Fetish, being no more desirous of giving a mental lead to white men than to black, but only wistful to find out what they thought of things as they are. The consequence of this action of mine has been, I fear, on the whole a rather more muddled feeling in the white mind regarding Fetish than ever heretofore existed; a feeling that, if what I said was true, (and in this matter of Fetish information no one has gainsaid the truth of it), West African religion was more perplexing than it seemed to be when regarded as a mere degraded brutal superstition or childish foolishness.
However, one distinguished critic has tackled my Fetish, and gallantly: the writer in the Edinburgh Review. With his remarks on our heresy regarding the deification of ancestors I have above attempted to deal, owning he is quite right—we do not believe in deified ancestors. I now pass on to his other important criticism, and again own he is quite right, and that "witchcraft and religious rites in West Africa are originally indistinguishable."[1] This is evidently a serious affair for West Africa and me, so I must deal with it carefully, and first quote my critic's words following immediately those just cited. "If this is correct there can be no doubt that such a confusion of the two ideas that in their later forms not only stand widely apart, but are always irreconcilably hostile, denotes the very lowest stage of aboriginal superstition wherever it prevails, for it has been held that, although the line between abject
- ↑ July, 1897, p. 221.
