Let us now take a case in which ancestor-worship, and no other form of religion (beyond mere superstitions), has been declared to be the practice of an African people.  Mr. Spencer gives the example of natives of the south-eastern district of Central Africa described by Mr. Macdonald in ’Africana.’[3] The dead man becomes a ghost-god, receives prayer and sacrifice, is called a Mulungu (= great ancestor or = sky?), is preferred above older spirits, now forgotten; such old spirits may, however, have a mountain top for home, a great chief being better remembered; the mountain god is prayed to for rain; higher gods were probably similar local gods in an older habitat of the Yao.[4]

Such is in the main Mr. Spencer’s resume of Mr. Duff Macdonald’s report.  He omits whatever Mr. Macdonald says about a Being among the Yaos, analogous to the Dendid of the Dinkas, or the Darumulun of Australia, or the Huron Ahone.  Yet analysis detects, in Mr. Macdonald’s report, copious traces of such a Being, though Mr. Macdonald himself believes in ancestor-worship as the Source of the local religion.  Thus, Mulungu, or Mlungu, used as a proper name, ’is said to be the great spirit, msimu, of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits together.[5] This is a singular stretch of savage philosophy, and indicates (says Mr. Macdonald) ’a grasping after a Being who is the totality of all individual existence....  If it fell from the lips of civilised men instead of savages, it would be regarded as philosophy.  Expressions of this kind among the natives are partly traditional, and partly dictated by the big thoughts of the moment.’  Philosophy it is, but a philosophy dependent on the ghost theory.

I go on to show that the Wayao have, though Mr. Spencer omits him, a Being who precisely answers to Darumulun, if stripped (perhaps) of his ethical aspect.  On this point we are left in uncertainty, just because Mr. Macdonald could not ascertain the secrets of his mysteries, which, in Australia, have been revealed to a few Europeans.

Where Mulungu is used as a proper name, it ’certainly points to a personal Being, by the Wayao sometimes said to be the same as Mtanga.  At other times he is a Being that possesses many powerful servants, but is himself kept a good deal beyond the scene of earthly affairs, like the gods of Epicurus.’

This is, of course, precisely the feature in African theology which interests us.  The Supreme Being, in spite of the potency which his supposed place as latest evolved out of the ghost-world should naturally give him, is neglected, either as half forgotten, or for philosophical reasons.  For these reasons Epicurus and Lucretius make their gods otiosi, unconcerned, and the Wayao, with their universal collective spirit, are no mean philosophers.

‘This Mulungu’ or Mtanga, ’in the world beyond the grave, is represented as assigning to spirits their proper places,’ whether for ethical reasons or not we are not informed.[6] Santos (1586) says ’they acknowledge a God who, both in this world and the next, measures retribution for the good or evil done in this.’