Note 4.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Many European casuists justify one who is questioned concerning matters he desires to keep secret, and who meets the inquisitive person with a falsehood. It cannot therefore be surprising that these poor Hottentots thus took advantage of the only defence open to them when they found their most cherished beliefs and customs the subject of impertinent and bungling interrogations by an unsympathetic intruder into their country. Their Bantu neighbours do the same. The Kaffir, we are told, “dislikes to find Europeans investigating his customs, and he usually hides all he can from them and takes a sportive pleasure in baffling and misleading them.”4.1 When questioned by Andersson, the Ovambo denied that they had any belief, or abruptly stopped him with a “Hush!”4.2 Prying of this kind is rarely welcomed even among peoples on a much higher plane of civilization. Not to appeal to our own feelings, we may take as an illustration a people of the Far East. To question a native of Korea concerning custom or belief at once arouses his suspicions. Indeed, for a stranger to enquire the number of houses in a village, or what the land produces, needs much tact if bad feeling is to be avoided. A missionary who lived for many years in the country was of opinion that people are unconscious of their customs. At any rate a Korean asked suddenly about a certain custom will in all likelihood deny that such a thing exists; and yet he may be absolutely free from dishonesty in the matter: he is simply unconscious, he has never thought about it.4.3