ABSTRACT
Among the unseen powers whose anger the primitive must avoid and whose good-will and support he must, if possible, secure, spirits, ancestors and the recently dead predominate. This chapter treats only of the ancestors and the dead. It tries to find what attitude primitives have been led to assume towards their ancestors and their dead, given the way in which they picture their relations with them. Everything that is out of the common is significant. A study of ancestor-worship among the Banyangwesi which appeared in Anthropos in 1925, shows that the entire religious life of the Bantus makes this its centre. Papuans of Geelfink Bay in Dutch New Guinea, to obtain the good-will of their dead, have recourse to amulets in addition to the prayers and presents they offer them, for they attribute to both courses the same magical virtue.
