With the help of this elementary philosophy a vast machinery of causation is always at hand for explaining untoward events. The Tshi-speaking negro on the West Coast of Africa has inside him a kind of life-power named _kra_. It existed long before his birth, for it served in the same capacity a whole series of predecessors; and it will continue its career after his death, when the man himself becomes a _srahman_ or ghost. The adjoining Ga-speaking tribes modify the _kra_ into two _kla_, one male and one female, the first of a bad disposition, the second good, who give advice and prompt to actions according {89} to their respective characters. Yet a third inmate dwells in the neighbouring Yoruba-speaking folk, one in the head, one in the stomach, and one in the great toe. Offerings are made to the first by rubbing fowl's blood and palm oil on the forehead. The second needs none, for it shares whatever the stomach receives. The third is propitiated as an agent of locomotion before starting on a journey. But the curious theme of the plurality of souls must not beguile us. Meantime the original _kra_ is set behind all the activities of nature, and extended to the whole sphere of material objects. Each town or village or district has its own local spirits, rulers of river and valley, rock and forest and hill. Sometimes they take human shape, and colour, white or black, for transformations of all kinds are always possible. They are not all of equal rank; the broad lake, the mountain, the sea where the surf breaks heavily and the frail craft are upset--the lightning, the storm, and the earthquake--the leopard, the crocodile, the shark, and the devastating smallpox--such are among the dreaded manifestations of these dangerous and mysterious powers. But the actual dead must not be forgotten; they must be provided with ghostly counterparts of food and weapons and utensils, with cloth and gold-dust, just as a departed chief must be accompanied into the next life by the wives and slaves who adorned his household state in this. {90}