Page:West African Studies.djvu/158

CHAPTER V.

FETISH.

 

Wherein the student of Fetish determines to make things quite clear this time, with results that any sage knowing the subject and the student would have safely prophesied; to which is added some remarks concerning the position of ancestor worship in West Africa.

 

The final object of all human desire is a knowledge of the nature of God. The human methods, or religions, employed to gain this object are divisible into three main classes, inspired—

Firstly, the submission to and acceptance of a direct divine message.

Secondly, the attempt by human intellectual power to separate the conception of God from material phenomena, and regard Him as a thing apart and unconditioned.

Thirdly, the attempt to understand Him as manifest in natural phenomena.

I personally am constrained to follow this last and humblest method, and accept as its exposition Spinoza's statement of it, "Since without God nothing can exist or be conceived, it is evident that all natural phenomena involve and express the conception of God, as far as their essence and perfection extends. So we have a greater and more perfect knowledge of God in proportion to our