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As if the superstition of the Fetishist consisted only in believing that the objects which produce the phaenomena of nature involuntarily, produce them voluntarily. The Fetishist thinks not merely that his Fetish is alive, but that it can help him in war, can cure him of diseases, can grant him prosperity, or afflict him with all the contrary evils.
The present-day methods of worship are no different from those of the savage; the method of supplication has changed with the advance of the years, but the fundamental ideas at the base of all worship are just as crude today as they were 4000 years ago. Primitive man was no more a fetishist than is the modern Catholic.
Progressive races, on the other hand, can throw off or exchange every part of their religion, except perhaps the remnant of original and natural belief in things unseen in fact, the Fetishist portion, such as ghost-existence and veneration of material objects, places, and things.
I am content to show that, whatever De Brosses did, we do not abandon a search for the motives of the savage fetishist. Civilised 'Fetishism' Tant pis pour monsieur le President. But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Muller's etymologies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato.
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