of its primal founders.

As I have observed above, the religion of these people has gained a
certain degree of abstraction, and this abstraction is further shown by
the presence of certain phallic rites and ceremonies in their religious
observances; but of this, more anon.[D]

[D] In a letter to me, a naval officer of high rank states that,
beyond question of doubt, the Aleutian priests keep male concubines
whom they use in their religious observances. He, also, gives other
evidences of phallic worship among these people.

In most of the tribes of Equatorial Africa, nature-worship has been
superseded by ghost-worship, devil-worship, or witch-worship, or,
rather, by ghost, devil, or witch propitiation; yet, in the sanctity of
the fetich, which is everywhere present, we see a relic of
nature-worship. Moreover, many of these tribes deify natural phenomena,
such as the sun, the moon, the stars, thunder, lightning, etc., etc.,
etc., showing that here, too, in all probability, religious feeling had
its origin in nature propitiation.

Abstraction also enters, to a certain extent, into the religious beliefs
of most of these negroes, in whom primal materialism has given place to
the unbridled superstition of crude spiritism. The curious habit these
people have of scraping a little bone dust from the skull of a dead
ancestor and then eating it with their food, thus, as they think,
transmitting from the dead to the living the qualities of the former, is
close kin to, and, in my opinion, is probably derived from, a worship of
the generative principle. When we take into consideration the fact that
circumcision, _extensio clitoridis_, and other phallic rites are
exceedingly common and prevalent among these negroes, this opinion has
strong evidence in its support.[12]

[12] Negroes of Benin and Sierra Leone (Bosman, _loc. cit._, p.
526), Mandingoes (Waitz, vol. ii, p. 3), Bechuanas (Holub, _loc.
cit._, p. 398); quoted also by Westermarck, _Human Marriage_, p.
206.

The Wa-kamba may have some idea of immortality, though observers have
never been able to determine this definitely. "The dead bodies of chiefs
are not thrown to the hyenas, as with the Masai, but are carefully
buried instead.... The bodies of less important members of the tribe are
simply thrown to the hyenas."[13]

[13] Gregory: _The Great Rift Valley_, p. 351.

In this people, religious ideas are exceedingly primitiv