It is always a question to what extent the fetish-doctor is a conscious hypocrite. He usually begins practice by exploiting some particular fetish in which he really believes and whose power he has proved. Finding the trade lucrative he invents other fetishes upon the same principle—for there _is_ a principle, that is to say, there is always some apparent relation between the ingredients of a fetish and the purpose for which it is designed. If some of his first fetishes should be successful and gain him a reputation he may come to believe in his own power. He may consciously abuse that power—and physicians in other lands have been known to do the same; but he still believes in the power—believes in fetishes and in witchcraft and in the possibility of its detection. Africa presents to the psychologist an unexplored and inviting field. A man who possesses a fetish-skull usually invokes its aid to prevent secret unfaithfulness on the part of his wife. He compounds a certain fetish the ingredients of which include a lock of his wife’s hair, cuttings of her nails, or her saliva. This fetish he puts into the box with the father’s skull; and now, it is believed, if his wife be unfaithful she will surely die; death being inflicted by the ancestor. It seems to be a fact that this fetish frequently proves effective without the aid of poison; that is to say, the woman dies. Fear often drives her to a tardy confession, which, however, affords her but small relief; for everybody tells her that she is going to die. “You’re a corpse,” says one. “You’re failing every day,” says another. And the poor woman, as if yielding to some occult compulsion, fails rapidly and dies. She dies, presumably, as a psychological consequence of her belief in the fetish. One must never tell a sick person that he is going to die lest one be charged with wishing his death. In some tribes it is equivalent to a curse designed to effect death, and is liable to severe punishment. The following dying confession was made by a woman in a Fang town of Gaboon: Years ago, when she was a child, a man of her town had given her a certain fetish medicine, concealing it in her food. After she had eaten it he told her what he had done, and said that this medicine would effect her death at the birth of her first child. She must keep this matter secret from everybody, even from her parents, lest the medicine kill her immediately. This gloomy prospect darkened her life for years, and just before the birth of her first child she sickened and died—probably as a psychological consequence of her belief in the fetish. Such confessions are not uncommon. The mental degradation of the African is often overlooked through the deeper regard for his moral degradation. Therefore it is my present purpose to depict the mental degradation of fetishism, and to set over against it the new and transforming conception of God and nature which Christ imparts to the African mind.