Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/81

 FETISHISM

53

FETISHISM

country; (n'nn among tho cannibal FauR; in the Niger Delta ;'"-;" — possibly from the French joujou, i. e. a doll or toy (KingsJey) — and grou-grou, according to some of the same origin, according to others a native term, but the natives say that it is "a white man's word ". Every Congo leader has his m'kissi; and in other tribes a word equivalent to "medicine" is used.

C. de Brosses first employed fetishism as a general descriptive term, and claimed for it a share in the early development of religious ideas (Du Culte des Dieiix Fetiches, 17fiO). He compared the phenomena observed in the negro worship of West Africa with certain features of the old Egyptian religion. This comparison led Pietschmann to emphasize the ele- ments of fetishism in the Egyptian religion by starting with its magic character. Basthold (1805) claimed as fetish "everything produced by nature or art, which receives divine honor, including sun, moon, earth, air, fire, water, mountains, rivers, trees, stones, im- ages, animals, if considered as objects of divine wor- ship". Thus the name became more general, imtil Comte employed it to designate only the lowest stage of religious development. In this sense the term is used from time to time, e. g. de la Rialle, Schultze, Menzies, HolTding. Taking the theory of evolution as a basis, Comte affirmed that the fundamental law of history was that of historic filiation, that is, the Law of the Three States. Thus the human race, like the human individual, passed through three successive stages: the theological or imaginative, illustrated by fetishism, polytheism, monotheism; the metaphysical or abstract, which differed from the former in explain- ing phenomena not by divine beings but by abstract powers or essences behind them ; the positive or scien- tific, where man enlightened perceives that the only realities are not supernatural beings, e. g. God or an- gels, nor abstractions, e. g. substances or causes, but phenomena and their laws as discovered by science. Under fetishism, therefore, he classed worship of heavenly bodies, nature-worship, etc. This theory is a pure assumption, yet a long time passed before it was cast aside. The ease with which it explained everything recommended it to many. Spencer for- mally repudiated it (Principles of Sociology), and with Tylor made fetishism a subdivision of animism.

While we may with Tylor consider the theory of Comte as abandoned, it is difficult to admit his own view. For the spirit supposed to dwell in the fetish is not the soul or vital power belonging to that object, but a spirit foreign to the object, yet in some way con- nected with and embodied in it. Lippert (1881), true to his exaggerated animism, defines fetishism as "a belief in the souls of the departed coming to dwell in anything that is tangible in heaven or on earth". Schultze, analysing the consciousness of savages, says that fetishism is a worship of material objects. He claims that the narrow circle of savages' ideas leads them to admire and exaggerate the value of very small and insignificant objects, to look upon these objects anthropopathically as alive, sentient, and willing, to connect them with auspicious or inauspi- cious events and experiences, and finally to believe that such objects require religious veneration. In his view these four facts accoimt for the worship of stocks and stones, bundles and bows, gores and stripes, which we call fetishism. But Schultze considers fet- ishism as a portion, not as the whole, of primitive religion. By the side of it he puts a worship of spirits, and these two forms run parallel for some distance, but afterwards meet and give rise to other forms of religion. He holds that man ceases to be a fetish- worshipper as soon as he learns to distinguish the spirit from the material object. To Muller and Brin- ton the fetish is something more than the mere object (Rel. of Prim. Peop., Phil.adelphia, 1898). Menzies (History of Religion, p. 129) holds that primitive man, like the untutored savage of to-day, in worshipping a

tree, a snake, or an idol, worshipped (he very objects themselves. He regards the suggcslioii that these ob- jects represented or were even the chviMing-place of some spiritual being, as an aftertliou(.;hl, \\p to which man has grown in the lapse of ages. The study of the African negro refutes this view. Ellis writes, " Every native with whom I have conversed on the subject has laughed at the possibility of its being supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice to some sifch object as a stone, which of itself would be perfectly obvious to his senses was a stone only and nothing more".

De La Saussaye regards fetishism as a form of anim- ism, i. e. a belief in spirits incorporated in single ob- jects, but says that not every kind of worship paid to material objects can be called fetishism, but only that which is connected with magic; otherwise the whole worship of nature would be fetishism. The stock and stone which forms the object of worship is then called the fetish. Tylor has rightly declared that it is very hard to say whether stones are to be regarded as altars, as symbols, or as fetishes. He strives to place nature-worship as a connecting link between fetishism and polytheism, though he is obliged to admit that the single stages of the process defy any accurate descrip- tion. Others, e. g. Reville, de La Saussaj'e, separate the worship of nature from animism. To Hoffding, following Usener, the fetish is only the provisional and momentary dwelling-place of a spirit. Others, e. g. Lubbock, Happel, insist that the fetish must be con- sidered as a means of magic — not being itself the ob- ject of worship, but a means by which man is brought into close contact with the deity — and as endowed with divine powers. De La Saussaye holds that to savages fetishes are both objects of religious worship and means of magic. Thus a fetish may often be used for magic purposes, yet it is more than a mere means of magic, as being itself anthropopathic, and often the object of religious worship.

Within the limits of animism, Tiele and Hoffding distinguish between fetishism and spiritism. Fetish- ism contents itself with particular objects in which it is supposed a spirit has for a longer or a shorter time taken up its abode. In spiritism, spirits are not bound up with certain objects, but may change their mode of revelation, partly at their own discretion, partly under the influence of magic. Thus Hoffding declares that fetishism, as the lowest form of religion, is distinguished from spiritism by the special weight it attributes to certain definite objects as media of psychical activity. In selecting objects of fetishism, religion appears, according to Hoffding, under the guise of desire. He holds that religious ideas are only religious in virtue of this connexion between need and expectation, i. e., as elements of desire, and that it ia only when thus viewed that fetishism can be under- stood. Htlbbe-Schleiden, on the contrary, holds that fetishism is not a proper designation for a religion, be- cause Judaism and Christianity have their fetishes as well as the nature religions, and says the word fetish should be used as analogous to a word-symbol or em- blem. Haddon considers fetishism as a stage of reli- gious development. Jevons holds magic and fetish- ism to be the negation of religion. He denies that fetishism is the primitive religion, or a basis from which religion developed, or a stage of religious devel- opment. To him, fetishism is not only anti-social, and therefore anti-religious, he even holds that the atti- tude of superiority manifested by the possessor to- wards the fetish deprives it of religious value, or rather makes it anti-religious.

The fetish differs from an idol or an amulet, though at times it is difficult to distinguish between them. An amulet, however, is the pledge of protection of a divine power. A fetish may be an image, e. g. the New Zealand wakapakoko, or not. but the divine power or spirit is supposed to be wholly incorporated in it. Farnell says an image may be viewed as a symbol, or