All of the elements embodied in this definition are found, generally, in the primitive religions of the African peoples. Believing that persons and objects of this world were inhabited by spirits, the African necessarily accounted for the phenomena of the universe by the arbitrary will of spiritual beings, whom he feared, and, therefore, worshipped, or sought to control by magic. Unable thus to find companionship with these unseen, mysterious personalities, the men of Africa knew no land of sunshine beyond the dreadful shadow of the grave; but the American slave, who experienced death as a short period of darkness before a day of eternal glory, did not inherit the fears of Africa. Now what did the slave bring from Africa? In answering this question let us consider what is commonly referred to as the inertia of African heritage. American missionaries reported that it was harder to teach the slaves who were born in Africa than those born in this country. This quotation from the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial America and West Indies, 1699, Section 473, supports this view: "Negroes born in this country were generally baptized, but for Negroes imported, the gross barbarity and rudeness of their manners, the variety and strangeness of their language, and the weakness and shallowness of their minds rendered it in a manner impossible to attain to any progress in their conversion."[5] Two definite cases bear a similar testimony, the one being that of Phyllis Wheatley, a girl brought here from Africa, who spoke of how her mother there worshipped the rising sun, the other, this story related by a man concerning his grandfather: "He was an old man, nearly 80 years old," he said, "and he manifested all the fondness for me that I could expect from one so old.... He always expressed contempt for his fellow slaves, for when young he was an African of rank.... He had singular religious notions, never going to meeting, or caring for the preachers he could, if he would, occasionally hear. He retained his native traditions respecting the deity and hereafter."[6] Other cases, though few, clearly demonstrate that among the American slaves also there existed a belief in ghosts and a lurking fear of the denizens of a mysterious world. But what was religion in Africa was generally regarded by the American slaves themselves as mere superstition.