He Flatters And Fees
Them, He Deprives Himself Of Riches To Give To Them As Sacrifices,
Believing They Will Relish It All The More Because It Gives Him Pain
Of Some Sort To Give It To Them.
He holds that they think it will
be advisable for them to encourage him to continue the giving by
occasionally doing what he asks them.
Naturally he never feels sure
of them; he sees that you may sacrifice to a god for years, you may
wrap him up - or more properly speaking, the object in which he
resides - in your only cloth on chilly nights while you shiver
yourself; you and your children, and your mother, and your sister
and her children, may go hungry that food may rot upon his shrine;
and yet, in some hour of dire necessity, the power will not come and
save you - because he has been lured away by some richer gifts than
yours.
You white men will say, "Why go on believing in him then?" but that
is an idea that does not enter the African mind. I might just as
well say "Why do you go on believing in the existence of hansom
cabs," because one hansom cab driver malignantly fails to take you
where you want to go, or fails to arrive in time to catch a train
you wished to catch.
The African fully knows the liability of his fetish to fail, but he
equally fully knows its power. One, to me, grandly tragic instance
of this I learnt at Opobo.
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