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LECTURE III.
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from each other by the intrusion of the Kafir tribes is a problem the solution of which must be left to the future. So much only is certain that the ancient Egyptian represents to us an independent primeval concentration of intellectual work in the country of the Nile, independent, so far as we know at present, of the ancient Aryan and Semitic concentration of language and religion.
But while the spoken languages of the African continent enable us to perceive in a general way the original articulation of the primitive population of Africa—for there is a continuity in language which nothing can destroy-we know, and can know, but little of the growth and decay of African religion. In many places Mohammedanism and Christianity have swept away every recollection of the ancient gods; and even when attempts have been made by missionaries or travellers to describe the religious status of Zulus or Hottentots, they could only see the most recent forms of African faith, and these were but too often depicted in their ridiculous rather than in their serious character. It is here where the theory of a primitive fetishism has done most mischief in blinding the eyes even of accurate observers as to anything that might lie beyond the growth of fetish worship
The only African religion of which we possess ancient literary records is the religion of Egypt, which has long been a riddle to us, as it was to the Greeks and Romans. At last, however, the light is beginning to dawn on the darkest chambers of the ancient temples of Egypt, and on the deepest recesses of the human heart, from which sprang both the belief
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