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Updated: July 27, 2025
It may be that the reflections upon the idea of God, which are embodied in mythology, have so tended to degrade the idea of God, that religious advance upon the lines of polytheism became impossible, just as the conception of God as a being who would promote the anti-social wishes of an individual, rendered religious advance upon the lines of fetishism impossible.
Fetishism is, as he says, an ill word, and has caused much confusion. Fetishism and Anthropological Method Throughout much of his work our author's object is to invalidate the anthropological method. That method sets side by side the customs, ideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different races. Of their languages it does not necessarily take account in this process.
'Are there no means of opening this country up to trade, no means of infusing into it an element superior to that of the Fanti races, of holding in check the savagery of the inland tribes, and preventing the whole coast again becoming abandoned to fetishism and human sacrifices? To the writer's mind there is but one method, and that one by an appeal to man's most ignoble passion the lust of gold.
It is necessary also to extend Positivist Fetishism to purely abstract existence; to "animate" the laws as well as the facts of nature. It is not sufficient to have made physics sentimental, mathematics must be made so too. This does not at first seem easy; but M. Comte finds the means of accomplishing it.
All other articles of consumption, except a very little grown on the spot, are imported from the mainland, and are, in consequence, dear. The surrounding country, however, is very highly cultivated so much so, that it exports for the Ujiji and other distant markets. The Africans have no religion, unless Fetishism may be considered such.
"And this enlightened gentleman," said Ob Hahn ironically, nodding to the man, "has just termed it fetishism. The ignorance " "Oh, I say!" protested the man at Ob Hahn's side. "I mean, you seem to think I meant something offensive. And as a matter of fact " "We've an argument, Gregg," laughed Snap.
Pierre, in his turn, then became impassioned, and for a whole month continued studying the affair, powerfully attracted by the visionary's pure, upright nature, but indignant with all that had subsequently sprouted up the barbarous fetishism, the painful superstitions, and the triumphant simony.
Even the aspects of nature are to the last degree depressing: no mountains; no hills; no horizon; no variety in forests; a soil during a large part of the year frozen or parched; a people whose upper classes are mainly given up to pleasure and whose lower classes are sunk in fetishism; all their poetry and music in the minor key; old oppressions of every sort still lingering; no help in sight; and, to use their own cry, "God so high and the Czar so distant."
The ruling class, in particular, continued to follow the religion of Islam, but it is generally believed that the masses of the population remained faithful to the more traditional West African religions based on fetishism and ancestor worship. Two of the more powerful rulers were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and Askia Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493.
The races among whom fetishism is found exhibit a well-known feature of the decadence of religion, namely that the great god or gods have grown weak and faint, and smaller gods and spirits have crowded in to fill up the blank thus caused.
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