The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature. A bird feather, a cow's horn, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and of invocation in swearing oathes. The blacks are very vain but in the Negro's way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings. A despairing man is always a strict master over anyone weaker, just as with us that man is always a tyrant in the kitchen who outside his own house hardly dares to look anyone in the face. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but not poetry.
Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet.
Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. Freud, Standard Edition, Vol.