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Updated: June 27, 2025
He dwelt on the fetishism involved in this, and said that Jesus Christ would be infinitely surprised and pained were he to return to earth and see what men were worshiping in his name. He added a story of a converted pagan who, being asked how many gods he worshiped, said: "One, and I ate him this morning."
Among the branches where foreign influence is least to be suspected, we discover, behind their more conspicuous fetishisms and superstitions, something which we cannot exactly call Monotheism, yet which tends in that direction. Waitz quotes Wilson for the fact that, their fetishism apart, they adore a Supreme Being as the Creator: and do not honour him with sacrifice.
They have no religion properly so called their only belief is in what we denote fetishism, which is a word taken from the Portuguese feticeira or witch.
His pole, his axis, his center, his all is Paris or even less Parisian manners, the taste of the day, fashion. Thanks to this organized fetishism, we have millions of copies of one single original pattern; a whole people moving together like bobbins in the same machine, or the legs of a single corps d'armee.
That is presumably one reason why fetishism is so wide-spread and so long-lived in Western Africa, for instance: though fetishes may be used for anti-social purposes, they may be and are also used for purposes which if selfish are not, or are not felt to be, anti-social.
These have already begun their work. All is to be "Russified": the constitutional bodies are to be virtually abolished; the university is to be brought down to the level of Dorpat once so noted as a German university, now so worthless as a Russian university; for the simple Protestantism of the people is to be substituted the fetishism of the Russo-Greek Church.
Before doing so, however, we cannot but notice that mythology and polytheism go together. Fetishism does not produce any mythology. Doubtless, the owner of a fetish which acts knows and can tell of the wonderful things it has done.
Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller and Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. Then I defended anthropological and criticised philological evidence. Our method of universal comparison was next justified in the matter of Fetishism. The Riddle Theory of Mr. Max Muller was presently discussed.
A visit to the Sparrow Hills, from which Napoleon first saw Moscow and the Kremlin, was also interesting; but the city itself, though picturesque, disappointed me. Everywhere were filth, squalor, beggary, and fetishism. Evidences of official stupidity were many.
Thus, fetishism, anthropomorphism and polytheism ascribe qualities to the Godhead, which are shown to be attributes assigned to the Godhead and imposed upon it from without, for eventually they are found by experience to be incompatible with the idea of God as it is revealed in the common consciousness.
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