IMAGIXATIOX. 155 



have given reasons for doing, that fetichism is not original 

 but derived, I cannot, of course, coincide in this view. 

 Nevertheless I think the behaviour of intelligent animals 

 elucidates tlie genesis of it. I have myself witnessed in 

 dogs two illustrative cases.' One of these consisted in a 

 large dog, which, while playing with a stick accidentally 

 thrust one end of it against his palate, when ' giving a yelp, 

 he dropped the stick, rushed to a distance from it, and 

 betrayed a consternation which was particularly laughable 

 in so ferocious-looking a creature. Only after cautious ap- 

 proaches and much hesitation was he induced again to lay hold 

 of the stick. This behaviour showed very clearly the fact that 

 the stick, while displaying none but the properties he was 

 familiar with, was not regarded by him as an active agent ; 

 but that when it suddenly inflicted a pain in a way never 

 before experienced from an inanimate object, he was led for 

 a moment to class it with animate objects, and to regard it 

 as capable of again doing him injury. Similarly, in the mind 

 of the primitive man, knowing scarcely more of natural 

 causation than a dog, the anomalous behaviour of an object 

 previously classed as inanimate suggests animation. The \ 

 idea of voluntary action is made nascent ; and there arises a 

 tendency to regard the object with alarm, lest it should 

 act in some other unexpected and perhaps mischievous way. 

 The vague notion of animation thus aroused will ob\dously 

 become a more definite notion, as fast as the development of 

 the ghost-theory furnishes a special agency to which the 

 anomalous behaviour can be ascribed.' 



" The other case observed by Mr. Spencer was that of an 

 intelligent retriever. Being by her duties as a retriever led 

 to associate the fetching of game with the pleasure of the 

 person to whom she brought it, this had become in her mind 

 an act of propitiation ; and so, ' after wagging her tail and 

 giinning, she would perform this act of propitiation as nearly 

 as practicable in the absence of a dead bird. Seeking about, 

 she would pick up a dead leaf or other small oliject, and 

 w^ould bring it with renewed manifestations of friendliness. 

 Some kindred state of mind it is wdiich, I believe, prompts 

 the savage to certain fetichistic observances of an anomalous 

 kind.' 



" These observations remind me of several experiments I 

 made some years ago on this subject, and which are perhaps 



