Excerpt from Wit and Wisdom From West Africa: Or a Book of Proverbial Philosophy, Idioms, Enigmas, and Laconisms As regards the African tongues, too much labour has hitherto been lavished upon the edits and portals which lead to the temple of knowledge. Sir William Jones, in the last century, made the same complaint touching Asiatic dialects. The true expression of the national spirit, containing the secrets of a race's mental organisa tion, and revealing the origin of customs long for gotten, is not to be sought in accidence or in vocabulary. 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.