of spirit-embodiment to images or idols. How an image may be considered a receptacle for a spirit, is well shown here by the straw and rag figures of men and beasts made in Calabar at the great triennial purification, for the expelled spirits to take refuge in, whereupon they are got rid of over the border.[1] As to positive idols, nothing could be more explicit than the Gold-Coast account of certain wooden figures called 'amagai,' which are specially treated by a 'wong-man' or priest, and have a 'wong' or deity in connexion with them; so close is the connexion conceived between spirit and image, that the idol is itself called 'wong.'[2] So in the Ewe district, the same 'edro' or deity who inspires the priest is also present in the idol, and 'edro' signifies both god and idol.[3] Waitz sums up the principles of West African idolatry in a distinct theory of embodiment, as follows: 'The god himself is invisible, but the devotional feeling and especially the lively fancy of the negro demands a visible object to which worship may be directed. He wishes really and sensibly to behold the god, and seeks to shape in wood or clay the conception he has formed of him. Now if the priest, whom the god himself at times inspires and takes possession of, consecrates this figure to him, the idea has only to follow that the god may in consequence be pleased to take up his abode in the figure, to which he may be specially invited by the consecration, and thus image-worship is seen to be comprehensible enough. Denham found that even to take a man's portrait was dangerous and caused mistrust, from the fear that a part of the living man's soul might be conveyed by magic into the artificial figure. The idols are not, as Bosman thinks, deputies of the gods, but merely objects in which the god loves to place himself, and which at the same time display him in sensible presence to his adorers. The
