Excerpt from The Fetish Folk of West Africa

In this book as in the one that preceded it, The Jungle Folk of Africa, the author endeavours to exhibit the humanity of the African as it impressed himself.

The difference between the two books is chiefly a difference of emphasis, and is indicated in the titles. In the former the African is described in relation to his surroundings - his exterior world. Much is said about the forest - deep, solemn, vast, impenetrably mysterious - wherein he roams at large with natures own wild freedom; contending also with its mighty forces, and wresting from it the means of existence by his own resourcefulness of expedient. In the present volume the author essays the more difficult task of revealing the interior world of the African - his mental habits and beliefs. Much is said about fetishism and folk-lore.

If, despite all that is said herein, the philosophy of fetishism should remain obscure - and there is no doubt of it; if the reader should close this book with the consciousness of a broad, comprehensive ignorance of the subject, it may be to some extent the fault of fetishism itself, which is the jungle of jungles, an aggregation of incoherent beliefs. The world of the African is as wild and strange as the weird world that we often visit on the brink of sleep. It was far from Africa that Siegfried thought it worth while to encounter the dread dragon, Fafner, and slay him for the possession of the magic tarnhelm forged by the Nibelung. In Africa everybody has a tarnhelm.

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