Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/327

Rh Such being the case, there can be no proof that the worship of the objects themselves was primordial, unless it is found to exist where the ghost-theory has not arisen; and I know no instance showing that it does so. But while those facts given in the "Descriptive Sociology" which imply worship of inanimate objects, or ascription of supernatural powers to them, fail to support Mr. Harrison's view, because always accompanied by the ghost-theory, sundry of them directly negative his view. There is the fact that an echo is regarded as the voice of the fetich; there is the fact that the inhabiting spirit of the fetich is supposed to "enjoy the savory smell" of meat roasted before it; and there is the fact that the fetich is supposed to die and may be revived. Further, there is the summarized statement made by Beecham, an observer of fetichism in the region where it is supposed to be specially exemplified, who says that:—

The fetiches are believed to be spiritual, intelligent beings, who make the remarkable objects of nature their residence, or enter occasionally into the images and other artificial representations, which have been duly consecrated by certain ceremonies. . . . They believe that these fetiches are of both sexes, and that they require food.

These statements are perfectly in harmony with the conclusion that fetichism is a development of the ghost-theory, and altogether incongruous with the interpretation of fetichism which Mr. Harrison accepts from Comte.

Already I have named the fact that Dr. Tylor, who has probably read more books about uncivilized peoples than any Englishman living or dead, has concluded that fetichism is a form of spirit-worship, and that (to give quotations relevant to the present issue)

To class an object as a fetish, demands explicit statement that a spirit is considered as embodied in it or acting through it or communicating by it.

. . . A further stretch of imagination enables the lower races to associate the souls of the dead with mere objects.

. . . The spirits which enter or otherwise attach themselves to objects may be human souls. Indeed, one of the most natural cases of the fetish-theory is when a soul inhabits or haunts the relics of its former body.

Here I may add an opinion to like effect which Dr. Tylor quotes from the late Prof. Waitz, also an erudite anthropologist. He says:—

According to his [the negro's] view, a spirit dwells or can dwell in every sensible object, and often a very great and mighty one in an insignificant thing. This spirit he does not consider as bound fast and unchangeably to the corporeal thing it dwells in, but it has only its usual or principal abode in it.