The climate in fact not only discourages but
prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes
have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless
generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of
nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some
of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others
calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the
dignitaries.[2]
[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African regime is J.A.
Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey
is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the
sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly
notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of
coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing
discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe-
and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the
Gold Coast.]
No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the
forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive.
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