94 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



inorganic fetishism among all peoples ; namely, that 

 they ascribed intentional and conscious life to a host 

 of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the 

 fears, the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhor- 

 rence for some given species of stones, plants, animals, 

 some strange forms or unusual natural object. The 

 subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts 

 of talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, 

 and exorcisms, had the same origin and were all due 

 to this primitive genesis of the fetish, the internal 







duplication of the external animation and personifica- 



tion of objects. 



It is evident that fetishism in its earliest and 

 most primitive form was always inspired by special 

 objects, since the external perception of animals and 

 of man is special and concrete. But we have seen 

 how our intelligence, by a spontaneous and innate 

 process, was led to form types from the immense 

 variety of special things and phenomena, and these 

 types are the specific forms of such things as are 

 alike, analogous, or identical. We have also seen that 

 by the same necessity of the psychical faculty, which 

 is not inconsistent with the fundamental process of 

 animal intelligence, man animates and personifies 

 these specific types, just as he had animated the 

 special perceptions whence they were generated in 

 his mind.* 



* This process of the evolution of primitive myth and of fetishes, 

 be inure elaborately considered in Chapter VII., when we come to 



