(4) A fourth entity is vaguely spoken of by some as a component part of the human personality, by others as separate but closely associated from birth to death, and called the life-spirit. Some speak of it as a civilized person speaks of a guardian angel. Regarded in that light, it should not be considered as one of the several _kinds_ of souls, but as one of the various _classes_ of spirits (which will be discussed in a subsequent chapter). To it worship is rendered by its possessor as to other spirits,--a worship, however, different from that which is performed for what are known and used as "familiar spirits." Others speak of the vague life-spirit as the "heart." The organ of our anatomy which we designate by that name, they call by a word which variously means "heart" or "feelings," much like our old English "bowels," the same word being employed equally to designate a physical organ and a mental state. Considering the organic heart as the seat (or a seat) of life, the natives believe that by witchcraft a person in health can be deprived of his life-soul, or "heart"; that he will then sicken; that the wizard or witch feasts in his or her magic orgy on this "heart," and that the person will die if that heart is not returned to him.
But whatever this human soul may be, whether existing in unity, duality, trinity, or quadruplicity, all agree in believing that it adds itself, on the death of the body, as another to the multitudinous company of the spirit-world. That world is all around us, and does not differ much in its wants and characteristics from this earthly life, except that it is free from some of the limitations to which material bodies are subject. In that spirit-world they require the same food as when on earth, but consume only its essence; the visible substance remains. They are possessed of all their human passions, both bad and good. Men expect to have their wives with them in that future, but I have never heard the idea even named, that there is procreation by spirits in that after-world. Not having believed during this life in a system of reward and punishment, they have no belief in heaven or hell. All the dead go to Njambi's Town, and live in that new life together, good and bad, as they lived together on earth. The "hell" spoken of by some of my informants, I believe, is not a native thought; it was probably engrafted on the coast tribes by the Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries of three hundred years ago.