excluded!"


Prayer-wheels

These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to
find them we have only to ask ourselves: What countries are
making no contribution to the progress of the race? What
countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or
industry?

For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of
Siam, that "they are exempted from all public charges, they
salute nobody, while everybody prostrates himself before them.
They are maintained at the public expense." In the same way we
read of the negroes of the Caribbean islands that "their priests
and priestesses exercise an almost unlimited power." Miss
Kingsley, in her "West African Studies", tells us that if we
desire to understand the institutions of this district, we must
study the native's religion.

For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it
influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as the
religion of the Europeans is at times. The African cannot say,
"Oh, that is all right from a religious point of view, but one
must be practical." To be practical, to get on in the world, to
live the day and night through, he must be right in the religious
point of view, namely, must be on working terms with the great
world of spirits around him. The knowledge of this spirit world
constitutes the religion of the African, and his customs and