to show the inter-relationship of certain groups of facts, an inter-relationship his acuteness enabled him to know existed. Therefore I here give the key to a good deal of this inter-relationship by dividing the different classes of Fetishism into four schools. In order to do this I have now to place before you a good deal of material that was either crowded out of the other work or considered by me to require further investigation and comparison. As for the new statements I make, I have been enabled to give them this from the constant information and answers to questions I receive from West Africa. For the rest of the Fetish I remain a mere photographic plate.
Regarding the other sections of this book, they are to me all subsidiary in importance to the Fetish, but they belong to it. They refer to its environment, without a knowledge of which you cannot know the thing. What Mr. Macmillan has ticketed as Introductory—I could not find a name for it at all—has a certain bearing on West African affairs, as showing the life on a West Coast boat. I may remark it is a section crowded out of my previous book; so, though you may not be glad to see it here, you must be glad it was not there.
The fishing chapter was also cast out of Travels in West Africa. Critics whom I respect said it was wrong of me not to have explained how I came by my fishes. This made me fear that they thought I had stolen them, so I published the article promptly in the National Review, and, by the kindness of its editor, Mr. Maxse, I reprint it. It is the only reprint in this book.
The chapter on Law contains all the material I have been so far able to arrange on this important study. The material on Criminal Law I must keep until I can go out again to West Africa, and read further in the minds of
