of worship constituting the lowest forms of religious expression.
The kind of attitude to be expected of an uncivilized man towards the Over-God is well illustrated, in at least one of its aspects, in the following report concerning the "noble tribes of the Bight of Panavia":
"At each new moon, the chief of a village goes out and stands alone in the open and talks to Anyambie. He does not praise Anyambie; he does not request him to interfere in human affairs; he, the chief, feels competent to deal with them, but he does want Anyambie to attend to those spirits which he, the god, can control better than a man, and he always opens the address to the great god with a catalogue of his, the chief's, virtues, saying: "I am the father of my people; I am a just man; I deal well with all men," etc. ... At first hearing these catalogues of the chief's virtues used to strike me as comic, and I once said: "Why don't you get some one else to say that for you; praising yourself in that barefaced way must be very trying to you." "Oh no," said the chief, "and, besides, no man knows how good he is except himself," which is a common West Coast proverb. But by and bye—when I had been the silent spectator of several of these talks with the great god—the thing struck me as really very grand. There was the great man standing up alone, conscious of the weight of responsibility on him of the lives and happiness of his people, talking calmly, proudly, respectfully to the great god who he knew ruled the spirit world. It was like a great diplomat talking to another great diplomat. . . . there was no whining or begging in it, . . . the grandeur of the thing charmed me."[1]
This is of course neither worship nor propitiation; Anyambie is apparently too high a personage to concern himself with the details of human life, or to care for such offerings as would please a tribal chief. And yet he is not great or good enough to elicit awe, admiration, and reverence. Miss Kingsley's oft-repeated question, "Is he good?"
- ↑ M. H. Kingsley, "The Forms of Apparitions in West Africa." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xiv. (1898-9), p. 334.
