[CHAPTER XXIX]
PRIMITIVE FEARS
Various authorities in Ethnology and Anthropology concur in their description and testimony as to the superstitious fears that obsess primitive man.
Professor Baldwin Spencer, the anthropologist, writes of the Australian aborigines that they have “an intense belief in evil magic. The natives have no idea of disease or pain as being due to anything but evil magic, except that which is caused by an actual accident which they can see.... Anything they do not understand they associate with evil magic.... You have only to tell a native that he is the victim of evil magic, and he succumbs at once, and can only be cured by the exercise of counter magic.
“The number of supernatural beings feared by aborigines of Australia is exceedingly great. For not only are the heavens peopled with such, but the whole face of the country swarms with them; every thicket, most watering places abound with evil spirits. In like manner, every natural phenomenon is believed to be the work of demons, none of which seem to be of a benign nature, one and all apparently striving to do all imaginable mischief to the poor black fellow.”
The same is true of the negro. “The negro is wont to regard the whole world around him as peopled with envious beings, to whom he imputes every misfortune that happens to him, and from whose harmful influence he seeks to protect himself by all kinds of magic means.” “The religion of the Bolok (of the Upper Congo River),” writes an observer, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass them in their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole, or appease, cheat or conquer or kill those spirits that trouble them, by their Nganga (medicine men), their rites, their ceremonies, and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to circumvent there would be no need of medicine men and their charms.... The Boloki folk believe that they are surrounded by spirits which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every hour of day and night.... I never met among them a man daring enough to go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper villages even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply was: ‘There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.’ The spirits whom the people dread so much are the mingoli, or disembodied souls of the dead; the life of the Boloki is described as ‘one long drawn out fear of what the mingoli may next do to them.’ Those dangerous beings dwell everywhere, land and water are full of them; they are ever ready to pounce on the living and carry them away, or to smite them with disease, and kill them.... The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other.... Belief in witches is interwoven into the very fiber of every Bantu speaking man and woman; and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch to be killed.”
The fear of evil spirits, the fear of witchcraft, and the fear of malicious spiritual agencies have been the pests of credulous, fear-obsessed humanity in all the ages of its existence. The crusades, and religious wars have shown us the blight suffered by humanity, obsessed by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct. Fear or pretended Love of the great spirit, under whatever name, is used for the avoidance of fears and evils.
Sir E. F. im Thurn describes the Indian of Guiana as haunted by the omnipresence of malicious ghosts and spirits. “The whole world of the Indian swarms with these beings. If by a mental effort, we could for a moment revert to a similar mental position, we should find ourselves surrounded everywhere by a host of harmful beings.... It is not therefore, wonderful that the Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp-fire after dark ... nor is it wonderful that occasionally the air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings, that a sorcerer is employed.”
The Indians of Paraguay “live in constant dread of supernatural beings and if nothing else contributed to make their life miserable, this ever present dread would be in itself quite sufficient to rob it of most of its joys.”