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All daily life, to the minutest particular, is religious. This stage of religion is characterized by fetichism. Every Indian is provided with his charm or fetich, revealed to him in some awful hour of ecstasy produced by fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the journey.
The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails, and other relics, a true fetich worship, was cultivated. Two arguments were relied on for the authenticity of these objects the authority of the Church, and the working of miracles. Even the worn-out clothing of the saints and the earth of their graves were venerated.
There it was in the will of Monsieur de la Riviere, duly signed and attested. Madelinette's heart stood still. Louis was no longer indeed, never had been Seigneur of Pontiac, and they had no right there, had never had any right there. They must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature had cynically laid upon him.
The fetich worshipper believes that the object which arrests his attention has already the powers which he ascribes to it; and it is in consequence of that belief that he takes it as his fetich. And it is only when he is convinced that it is not a fetich that he rejects it as a useless tool.
Perhaps a minute passed before the girl reappeared. She went straight to Bram and before the wolf-man's eyes held a long, shining tress of hair! Instantly the mumbling in Bram's throat ceased and he thrust out slowly a huge misshapen hand toward the golden strand. Philip felt his nerves stretching to the breaking point. With Bram the girl's hair was a fetich.
Being no longer intimidated by the fetich of progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to see how they came to be produced.
That one who sees the universe move round him understandingly, and fathoms in some degree the wonder and the beauty of the eternal laws, must be a pleasanter object to his Creator than any other who, merely employing pleasure, makes a fetich of his luxuries, his Aldines and Elzevirs, and, dying, goes into the unknown world no wiser concerning the ends and aims of this one than when he entered it.
I believe that similar charms or amulets, under the names of domini, grigri, fetich &c. &c. are common in all parts of Africa. In this case it is impossible not to admire the wonderful contagion of superstition; for, notwithstanding that the majority of the Negroes are Pagans, and absolutely reject the doctrines of Mahomet.
The incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. At any rate, when the idea of making Holroyd a sacrifice to the Dynamo Fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion.
A more advanced stage in the history of fetichism is that which is reached by reflection on the fact that a fetich not unfrequently ceases to prosper the undertakings of its possessor in the way he expected it to do. On the principles of animism, everything that is whether animate, or inanimate according to our notions is made up of spirit, or soul, and body.
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