There is nothing strange in the perpetuation of ideas and modes of thought through many thousand years. Their origin is in the very organization of men; for it is through organization that isolated nations manifest a proclivity to certain mental conceptions and even modes of expression. The negro is essentially a Fetish worshiper -a believer in witchcraft and in the efficacy of charms. Such ideas and the modes of expressing them are found wherever that low grade of humanity occurs, occupying a zone across all Africa and the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean; nay, even all round the world, if the black populations of America are included; for these in the United States, in the midst of moral, religious, Christian communities, are still full of their African ideas. I believe that if it were possible for a new race of autochthonic negroes to arise, it would inevitably fall into these delusions; as certainly as, if there were new autochthons of the yellow race, they would spontaneously and inevitably invent a monosyllabic language. These are the results of organization. They make their appearance wherever the element of that organization occurs; or, to use a common though perhaps incorrect expression, they descend with the blood. The Finnish peasant still has faith in incantations and charms; he believes that there are witches who can ride on a stick to the moon, and cause her eclipse by their nocturnal invocations; that there are men who can still sell to the sailor a favorable wind, and to the rustic a refreshing shower. It was this element in the blood of Europe that made the barbarian races, after the death of the Latin tongue, such a ready receptacle for all kinds of imposture; that gave faith in relics and force to fetishisms; that turned the minister of the Gospel into a rain-maker and wind-raiser, as if the unchangeable and eternal laws of nature might be suspended or modified at his prayer.
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