The snakes are spirits; and such are all the innumerable spirits which infest the air, excepting only a man’s ancestors, who are more or less kindly disposed towards him. The African, therefore, is not merely, like the Mohammedan, the victim of inexorable fate; nor merely the plaything of nature. But he is subject to the caprice of evil spirits, or the object of their malignant hostility. The following are chief factors in the demoralization of African character: _first_, the African’s attitude towards the powers above him is that of fear, for he deems them hostile to him; _second_, his consequent attitude towards his fellow men is that of distrust, culminating in the belief in witchcraft; _third_, his conception of his own destiny is not hopeful nor ennobling: the future life is not better, but worse, than this life. Against the hostility of the spirits a man’s ancestors (especially his immediate father) afford him some protection. But even such protection is uncertain; for the ancestors themselves are very petulant and easily offended, and when they are displeased they are as much to be feared as other spirits. The favours which a son seeks from his father are not spiritual blessings of any kind, but temporal benefits. It cannot be said that the motive of this worship is entirely filial reverence. A father is much more useful dead than living; and aged parents are sometimes even afraid that their sons will put them to death in order to procure the benefits which they could afterwards confer. The skull of the father is the commonest ancestral fetish, but not the only one. An old chief, one day when I was visiting in his town for the first time, came and laid at my feet his most sacred fetish. It was contained in a small cylindrical box of bark made for the express purpose of holding this kind of fetish. The women, when they saw the box, screamed with fear and fled for their lives, putting their hands on their ears lest they should hear the old man’s words and die. They are not supposed to know the contents of the box, and they are ready at any moment to take a solemn oath that they do not know, though as a matter of fact they know very well.