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They parade high-sounding principles to cover selfish ends; interpret the Constitution by a doctrine of loaves and fishes; while individual independence and private conviction are whirled away in the political maelstrom, and the party-badge is reverenced and hugged as the African reverences and hugs his fetish.
The poor will hear gladly enough of healing that is to be had without money and without price, and operations that may be avoided by simply keeping well, but my experience is that the fetish of the professional man is a jealous god, given to heresy hunting, and bowing down and worshiping at the shrine of 'regularity. They want to preserve the status quo at any cost."
The curiosity about it, in the eyes of this incisive Gaul, was "not the divinity, but the worshipers." All day long a crowd filed solemnly by it under the supervision of a detachment of police, each pilgrim bestowing upon the fetish, "an egg-shaped lump of glass," half a second's adoration, and then moving reluctantly on.
Igubo conducted us immediately to his house, round which a number of people were collected, and inside was a man with his face painted and his hair dressed out with strange ornaments, performing all sorts of antics. "Dat de fetish man," said Timbo. "He do no good. He t'ink he enchant de sick children. He one 'postor."
Suppose him in taking his stand to have taken up some social faith that for him has promise of better things. He will find his new creed surrounded by its own swarm of prejudices, and if he refuse to worship every fetish of the free-thinker, declaring that this stands to him for a certain definite, beautiful thing, and fighting for it, he will find himself denied and scouted by his new friends.
"My people will drive them into the sea," the king said. "We have been troubled with them too long. They can make guns, but they cannot fight. My people will eat them up. We fought them before; and see," he said pointing to a great drum, from the edge of which hung a dozen human skulls, "the heads of the White men serve to make a fetish for me."
We next discovered in man, as he issued from a simply animal condition and attained the power of reflection, the origin of the special myth or fetish, which was a higher evolution of that which is proper to animals; hence the origin of the specific myth was altogether anthropomorphic, whether physical or moral; and hence came also the development and ramification of all mythologies, and of universal polytheism.
Richard Lander was comparatively inured to the climate, but his brother now begun to feel it severely, he was sore, tired, and feverish, and longed to be down in a hut, but they were obliged to remain under a tree for three hours, before they could be favoured with that opportunity, because the chief of that town was engaged in making a fetish, for the purpose of counteracting any evil intentions that the white men might entertain towards him.
Naturally as we did all this in the spirit of an idle joke our rewards and punishments were rather desultory. To our surprise, however, we soon found that our boys took Little Simba quite seriously. He was a fetish, a little god, a power of good or bad luck. We did not appreciate this point until one evening, after a rather disappointing day, Mahomet came to us bearing Little Simba in his hand.
These daboas arc taken care of in the most pious manner, and well fed on rats, mice, or birds, in their fetish houses or temples, where the people attend to pay their adoration, and where those also who are sick or lame apply for assistance.
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