FETICHISM OR ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 517 



naturally seem alive, agencies alike for good or evil, with powers mys- 

 terious indeed but not wholly dissimilar. Even inorganic things, stones 

 and sticks, whatever may ever have been observed to move without 

 apparent cause, might be supposed to be able to move, as animals 

 might naturally be supposed to be able to talk. As the primitive man 

 would urge on his half-tamed wolf or jackal to seize the deer or wild 

 beast he was hunting, he would tend to caress or urge on the spear 

 he threw or the bow he aimed ; for, before subjective knowledge or 

 abstract thought was possible, as soon as a thing moved, although the 

 man pushed it, bent or threw it, it would become a moving thing, and 

 seem to him to act as a living thing. The notion of a cause of motion, 

 wholly independent of the moving thing, could not arise without 

 greater power of abstract thinking than can be attributed to primi- 

 tive men. 



So soon as intelligent curiosity began to mingle with the dull 

 wonder with which human beings had long regarded unusual natural 

 events — such as, for instance, an eclipse, a flash of lightning, or a flood 

 — the only explanations that could suggest themselves would be the 

 logical result of the prevalent habits of thought, of such simple ana- 

 logical reasoning as has been referred to. All moving things being 

 vaguely felt to be living, the sun in eclipse would be thought of as sick 

 or wounded ; the lightning as a creature like a rattlesnake that makes 

 a noise, glides swiftly, and strikes suddenly ; the flood as the river itself 

 in a rage or passion. Such vague explanations as these of the nature 

 of the external universe, or of special events in it — explanations so little 

 self-conscious and so little reasoned as hardly to deserve the name of 

 "explanations" — would seem to be in the natural course of evolution 

 the first notions that could be called religious ; but such notions are 

 pure fetichism. The characteristic of such a state of thought is, that 

 the moving principle is not thought of as separate from the moving 

 thing, nor the living principle as separate from the living being, nor 

 the spirit of other men or animals as separate from their bodies. The 

 observances appropriate to such a religion would consist in appeals to 

 those external beings or imprecations upon them, similar to those 

 appropriate between man and man, because those beings would be 

 regarded as living and so not felt to be wholly different from men ; 

 but in every case the thing or object itself, and not anything unseen, 

 would be the object of any ceremonial observance. 



A community of children between the ages of two and five might 

 naturally evolve a somewhat similar religious system. The baby who 

 cries out, "Naughty door ! " when it pinches its fingers in the hinges ; 

 the child who urges a spinning-top to continue spinning, or is angry with 

 it for stopping ; or who listens with wondering awe to a watch and asks 

 if it is alive, long before any of them have any notion of spirit or ghost, 

 or of unseen causes of action — all illustrate how naturally fetichism re- 

 sults from simple modes of thinking and reasoning. Similar habits of 



