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Updated: June 23, 2025
When before in the history of the world has there been such a progress among mere barbarians, with fetichism for their native religion? Races have advanced in every element of civilization, and in those virtues which give permanent strength to character, under all the benumbing and degrading influences of slavery, while nations with wealth, freedom, and prosperity have declined and perished.
In ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times the student notices a great undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality.
In place of the romantic conception of primitive life, which made the savage essentially a civilized child, a grimmer picture unfolded itself. Fetichism, shamanism, magic, human sacrifice, totemism, ritualism, all were found combined and interactive in a scheme of life alien to our own enlightened outlook. In such an atmosphere it was that mythology arose.
The consequence is, that while these many millions of outcast people are numbered among the Hindus, and regard themselves as Hindus, Hinduism itself has for them nothing but curses, and, more than all others, they must be satisfied with the devil-worship of their fathers. Beneath all these lower aspects of popular Hinduism is still found what may be called its lowest stratum Fetichism.
The spirits of fetichism, according to Höffding, become eventually the gods of polytheism: such a spirit, so long as it is a fetich, is "the god of a moment," and must come to be permanent if it is to attain to the ranks of the polytheistic gods. But fetiches, even when their function becomes permanent, remain fetiches and do not become gods.
Thus the germs of rank, in these cases, are sown by the magic which is fetichism in action. Try the Zulus: 'the heaven is the chief's, he can call up clouds and storms, hence the sanction of his authority. In New Zealand, every Rangatira has a supernatural power. If he touches an article, no one else dares to appropriate it, for fear of terrible supernatural consequences.
Max Muller's system assigns little or no place to the superstitious beliefs without which, in other countries than India, society could not have come into organised existence. In his polemic against Fetichism, it is not always very easy to see against whom Mr. Muller is contending.
The highest form to which fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit, which is found among the ancient tribes of North America. When man reaches a higher development, caprice and chance disappear from religion. We have here nature-worship in its beginnings.
The stick or stone is the medium of communication between the man and the spirits who can bless or harm him, and which to his mind are as countlessly numerous as the swarms of mosquitoes which he drives out of and away from his summer cottage by smudge fires in August. One need not travel in Yezo or Saghalin to see practical Fetichism. Go where you will in Japan, there are fetich worshippers.
Muller then goes on to prove that 'no religion consists of fetichism only, choosing his examples of higher elements in negro religion from the collections of Waitz. It is difficult to see what bearing this has on his argument. Even if no tribe in the world is exclusively devoted to fetiches, the argument makes no progress.
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