Take away the Manes and the astral Spirit, and remains the African belief in the ειδωλον or Umbra, spiritus, or ghost. When the savage and the barbarian are asked what has become of the “old people” (their ancestors), over whose dust and ashes they perform obsequies, these veritable secularists only smile and reply Wáme-kwisha, “they are ended.” It proves the inferior organisation of the race. Even the North American aborigines, a race which Nature apparently disdains to preserve, decided that man hath a future, since even Indian corn is vivified and rises again. The East African has created of his fears a ghost which never attains the perfect form of a soul. This inferior development has prevented his rising to the social status of the Hindu, and other anciently civilised races, whom a life wholly wanting in purpose and occupation drove from the excitement necessary to stimulate the mind towards a hidden or mysterious future. These wild races seek otherwise than in their faith a something to emotionise and to agitate them.
The East African’s Credenda—it has not arrived at the rank of a system, this vague and misty dawning of a creed—are based upon two main articles. The first is demonology, or, rather, the existence of Koma, the spectra of the dead; the second is Uchawi, witchcraft or black magic, a corollary to the principal theorem. Few, and only the tribes adjacent to the maritime regions, have derived from El Islam a faint conception of the one Supreme. There is no trace in this country of the ancient and modern animal-worship of Egypt and India, though travellers have asserted that vestiges of it exist amongst the kindred race of Kafirs. The African has no more of Sabæism than what belongs to the instinct of man: he has a reverence for the sun and moon, the latter is for evident reasons in higher esteem, but he totally ignores star-worship. If questioned concerning his daily bread, he will point with a devotional aspect towards the light of day; and if asked what caused the death of his brother, will reply Jua, or Rimwe, the sun. He has not, like the Kafir, a holiday at the epoch of new moon: like the Moslem, however, on first seeing it, he raises and claps his hands in token of obeisance. The Mzimo, or Fetiss hut, is the first germ of a temple, and the idea is probably derived from the Kurban of the Arabs. It is found throughout the country, especially in Uzaramo, Unyamwezi, and Karagwah. It is in the shape of a dwarf house, one or two feet high, with a thatched roof, but without walls. Upon the ground, or suspended from the roof, are handfuls of grain and small pots full of beer, placed there to propitiate the ghosts, and to defend the crops from injury.
A prey to base passions and melancholy godless fears, the Fetissist, who peoples with malevolent beings the invisible world, animates material nature with evil influences. The rites of his dark and deadly superstition are all intended to avert evils from himself, by transferring them to others: hence the witchcraft and magic which flow naturally from the system of demonology. Men rarely die without the wife or children, the kindred or slaves, being accused of having compassed their destruction by “throwing the glamour over them;” and, as has been explained, the trial and the conviction are of the most arbitrary nature. Yet witchcraft is practised by thousands with the firmest convictions in their own powers; and though frightful tortures await the wizard and the witch who have been condemned for the destruction of chief or elder, the vindictiveness of the negro drives him readily to the malevolent practices of sorcery. As has happened in Europe and elsewhere, in the presence of torture and the instant advance of death, the sorcerer and sorceress will not only confess, but even boast of and believe in, their own criminality. “Verily I slew such a one!—I brought about the disease of such another!”—these are their demented vaunts, the offspring of mental imbecility, stimulated by traditional hallucination.
In this state of spiritual death there is, as may be imagined, but little of the fire of fanaticism: polemics are as unknown as politics to them; their succedaneum for a god is not a jealous god. But upon the subjects of religious belief and revelation all men are equal: Davus becomes Œdipus, the fool is as the sage. What the “I” believes, that the “Thou” must acknowledge, under the pains and penalties of offending Self-esteem. Whilst the African’s faith is weakly catholic, he will not admit that other men are wiser on this point than himself. Yet he will fast like a Moslem, because doing something seems to raise him in the scale of creation. His mind, involved in the trammels of his superstition, and enchained by custom, is apparently incapable of receiving the impressions of El Islam. His Fetissism, unspiritualised by the philosophic Pantheism and Polytheism of Europe and Asia, has hitherto unfitted him for that belief which was readily accepted by the more Semitic maritime races, the Somal, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima. To a certain extent, also, it has been the policy of the Arab to avoid proselytising, which would lead to comparative equality: for sordid lucre the Moslem has left the souls of these Kafirs to eternal perdition. According to most doctors of the saving faith, an ardent proselytiser might convert by the sword whole tribes, though he might not succeed with individuals, who cannot break through the ties of society. The “Mombas Mission,” however, relying upon the powers of persuasion, unequivocally failed, and pronounced their flock to be “not behind the greatest infidels and scoffers of Europe: they blaspheme, in fact, like children.” With characteristic want of veneration they would say, “Your Lord is a bad master, for he does not cure his servants.” When an early convert died, the Wanyika at once decided that there is no Saviour, as he does not prevent the decease of a friend. The sentiment generally elicited by a discourse upon the subject of the existence of a Deity is a desire to see him, in order to revenge upon him the deaths of relatives, friends, and cattle.[17]
[17] That the Western African negro resembles in this point his negroid brother, the following extract from an amusing and truthful little volume, entitled “Trade and Travels in the Gulf of Guinea and Western Africa” (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1851), will prove:—
Always anxious,—says Mr. J. Smith, the author,—to get any of them (the Western Africans) to talk about God and religion, I said, “What have you been doing King Pepple?”
“All the same as you do,—I tank God.”
“For what?”
“Every good ting God sends me.”
“Have you seen God?”