argue
that, after all, the theistic conception is at the back of the animistic
practice, thus importing his theory into his facts. His theory would,
really, be in a better way, if sacrifice is _not_ offered to the Creator,
but this had not occurred to Mr. Scott.

It is plain, in any case, that the religion of the Africans in the
Blantyre region has an element not easily to be derived from ancestral
spirit-worship, an element not observed by Mr. Spencer.

Nobody who has followed the examples already adduced will be amazed by
what Waitz calls the 'surprising result' of recent inquiries among the
great negro race. Among the branches where foreign influence is least to
be suspected, we discover, behind their more conspicuous fetishisms and
superstitions, something which we cannot exactly call Monotheism, yet
which tends in that direction.[15] Waitz quotes Wilson for the fact that,
their fetishism apart, they adore a Supreme Being as the Creator: and do
not honour him with sacrifice.

The remarks of Waitz may be cited in full:

'The religion of the negro may be considered by some as a particularly
rude form of polytheism and may be branded with the special name of
fetishism. It would follow, from a minute examination of it, that--apart
from the extravagant and fantastic traits, which are rooted in the
character of the negro, and which radiate therefrom over all his
creations--in comparison with the religions of other savages it is neither
very specially differentiated nor very specially crude in form.

'But this opinion can be held to be quite true only while we look at the
_outside_ of the negro's religion, or estimate its significance from
arbitrary pre-suppositions, as is specially the case with Ad. Wuttke.

'By a deeper insight, which of late several scientific investigators have
succeeded in attaining, we reach, rather, the surprising conclusion that
several of the negro races--on whom we cannot as yet prove, and can hardly
conjecture, the influence of a more civilised people--in the embodying of
their religious conceptions are further advanced than almost all other
savages, so far that, even if we do not call them monotheists, we may
still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism, seeing that
their religion is also mixed with a great mass of rude superstition which,
in turn, among other peoples, seems to overrun completely the purer
religious conceptions.'

This conclusion as to an element of pure