THE
belief in spiritual
beings opens an immense vista of the purely superstitious side of the theology of Bantu African religion.
All the air and the future is peopled with a large and indefinite company of these beings. The attitude of the Creator (Anyambe) toward the human race and the lower animals being that of indifference or of positive severity in having allowed evils to exist, and His indifference making Him almost inexorable, cause effort in the line of worship to be therefore directed only to those
spirits who, though they are all probably malevolent, may be influenced and made benevolent.
.
The
native thought in regard to the origin of spirits is vague; necessarily so. An unwritten belief that is not based upon revelation from a superior source nor on an induction from actual experience and observation, but that is added to and varied by every individual''s fancy, can be expressed in definite words only after inquiry among many as to their ideas on the subject. These, I find, coincide on a few lines; just as the consensus of opinion on any subject in any community win find itself running in certain channels, influenced by the utterances of the stronger or wiser leaders.
It appears, therefore, that some of the spirits seem to have been conterminous with the life of Paia-Njambi in the eternities. An eternity past, impossible as it is for any one to comprehend, is yet a thing thinkable even with the Bantu African, for be has words to express it, "peke-na-jome," ever-and-beyond, "tamba-na-ngama," unknown-and-secret.
Away back in that unknown time existed Paia-Njambi. Whence or how, is not asked by the natives; nor have I had any attempt even of a reply to my own inquiries. He simply existed. They are not sufficiently absurd to say that He created Himself. To do that He would need to antedate Himself. I have met none who thought sufficiently on the subject to worry their minds, as we in our civilization often do, in effort to go back and back to the unthinkable point in time past when God was not. Indeed so little is the native mind in the habit of any such research that I can readily perceive how their "We don''t know" could easily be misunderstood by a foreign traveller, scientist, or even missionary, as a confession that "they did not know God,"--a statement which is true, but not the equivalent of, or synonymous with, that traveller''s assertion that the native had no idea of a God. The native thought, wiser than ours, simply and unreasoningly says, "He is, He was." Conterminous with Him in origin there may have been some other spirits. This has been said to me by a very few persons with some hesitation. But if those spirits were indeed equal in existence with Njambi, they were in no respect equal to Him in character or power, and had no hand in the
creation of other beings. In the Mpongwe tribe at Gabun one writer, Rev. J. L. Wilson, D.D., fifty years ago, thought the belief existed that "next to God in the government of the world are two spirits, one of whom, Onyambe, is hateful and wicked. The people seldom speak of Onyambe, and always evince displeasure when the name is mentioned in their presence. His influence over the affairs of men, in their estimation, does not amount to much; and the probability is that they have no very definite notions about the real character of this
spirit." His character would be indicated by his name, O-nya-mbe (He-who-is-bad). This name has sometimes been used by missionaries to translate our word "devil." Perhaps the idea of the word itself came from long-ago contact of this coast tribe with foreigners.
A second and more recognized source of supply to the company of spirits is original creation by Njambi. While this origin is named by some, I have not found it believed in to any very great extent. Even those whom I did find believing it had very vague ideao the mode or object of their creation. Of the Creation of mankind, and even of the Fall, almost all of the tribes have legends, more or less distinct, and with a modicum of truth, doubtless derived from traditions coinciding with the Mosaic history; but of a previous creation of purely spiritual beings I have found no legend nor well-defined story. If such specially created spirits exist at all, their relation to Njambi is of a very shadowy kind; they are, indeed, inferior to Him, and are in theory under His government in the same sense that human beings are. But Njambi, in His far-off indifference in actual practice, does not interfere with or control them or their actions. They are part of the motley inhabitants of "Njambi''s Town," the place of the Great Unknown, as also are all the other living beasts and beings of creation. They also have their separate habitat, and pursue their own devices, generally malevolent, with the children of men.
But the general consensus of opinion is that the world of spirits is peopled by the souls of dead human beings. This presupposes a belief in a future life, the existence of which in the native mind some travellers have doubted. I have never met that doubt from the native himself. While I do not impute to the travellers referred to any desire, in their efforts at describing the low grade of intelligence or religious belief of certain tribes, to misrepresent, I fully believe they were mistaken, their mistake arising from misunderstanding. It is not probable that they met, in the course of their few years, what I have not met with in a lifetime. It is probable that natives had expressed to them a doubt, or even ignorance, of a general resurrection, and may have said to them, as a few have said to me, "No, we do not live again; we are like goats and dogs and chickens,--when we die that is the end of us." Such a statement is indeed a denial of the resurrection of the
body, but it is not a denial of a continued existence of the soul in another life. The very people who made the above declaration to me preserved their family fetich, made sacrifices to the spirits of their ancestors, and appealed to them for aid in their family undertakings. The few who have expressed a belief in transmigration did not consider that the residence of a human spirit in the body of a beast was a permanent state; it was a temporary condition, assumed by the spirit voluntarily for its own pleasure or convenience, and terminable at its own will, precisely as human spirits during their mortal life are, everywhere and by all, believed capable of temporarily deserting their own human body and controlling the actions of a beast. This belief in transmigration, though not general, has been found among individuals in almost all tribes.
It being thus generally accepted that all departed human souls become spirits of that future that is all around us, there is still a difference in the testimony of intelligent witnesses as to who and what, or even how many, of these souls are in one human being. (1) Ordinarily, the native will say in effect, "I am one, and my soul is also myself. When I die, it goes out somewhere else." (2) Others will say, "I have two things,--one is the thing that becomes a spirit when I die, the other is the spirit of the body and dies with it." (This "other" may be only a personification of what we specify as the animal life.) But it has frequently occurred that even intelligent natives, standing by me at the side of a dying person, have said to me, "He is dead." The patient was indeed unconscious, lying stiff, not seeing, speaking, eating, or apparently feeling; yet there was a slight heartbeat. I would point out to the relatives these evidences of life. But they said: "No, he is dead. His spirit is gone, he does not see nor hear nor feel; that slight movement is only the spirit of the body shaking itself. It is not a person, it
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