Another striking paper, read by Mr. Fitzgerald Marriott before the
Anthropological Section, had reference to the secret societies on the West Coast. "The science of life and death was taught in the highest of these societies, and even hinted at in the inferior." Fetishism must not be confused with these societies, though spirit worship perhaps might be asso- elated with them. "A mystic religion and belief in one God, a Creator, from whom springs all life, and to whom death was but in some sort a return, was the very inner secret of secrets; more they did not teach." If this is true, the secret societies of West Africa are not very different from the Ancient Mysteries, where the chief secret was the impressive com- munication of some philosophical aphorism in regard to religion, or the telling of the secret name of the god. This production of a secret name is indeed the universal impulse of all who make secret societies. When children "make secrets "—i.e., form inchoate secret societies among them- selves—the inner mystery is almost always the calling of some- thing by a new and strange and secret name.
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