Excerpt from At the Back of the Black Man's Mind: Or Notes on the Kingly Office in West Africa The object of this little work is twofold. In the first place I wish to show that, concurrent with fetishism or Jujuism, there is in Africa a religion giving us a much higher conception of God than is generally acknowledged by writers on African modes of thought. And, in the second place, I am anxious to make clear the vital importance of the kingly office to the African communities. This concurrence of fetishism and a higher religion is nothing new, and as our knowledge of primitive and degenerate people increases it will probably be found to be quite common, if not the rule. "Traces of ancestor worship and fetishism have in all ages been found among the Israelites, especially among those of the northern kingdom; this is abundantly proved," writes Professor Fr. Hommel in his Ancient Hebrew Tradition Illustrated by the Monuments, by various passages in the Old Testament literature, but it is no more an argument against the concurrent existence of a higher conception of the Deity than the numerous superstitious customs and ideas still prevalent among the lower orders of almost every civilised country of the present day are ailments against the existence and practical results of Christianity." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.