50 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



ligent, conscious duty, and again through his ever- 

 widening spirit from a moral duty to a spiritualized, 

 deified religion. 



FETICHISM 



Fetichism, such as we see in Africa to-day, seems to 

 be the lowest of all forms of existing religions, a super- 

 stitious worship of material things, or fetiches, wherein 

 spirits are supposed to abide. Closely connected with 

 the belief in magic and witchcraft, necromancy and 

 spiritism, it appears to be based mainly on fear of the 

 many enemies, seen and unseen, which beset man in 

 his struggle for existence. Survivals of this early 

 primitive religion may be easily witnessed, even among 

 so-called civilized peoples to-day, in their countless 

 objects of superstitious regard. As the possible basis, 

 however, from which all religion has sprung, it would 

 seem to deserve as kindly a notice as the humble amoeba 

 in our larger view of the evolution of life. For is it not 

 well to remember, in the words of a higher form of 

 religion (reading the words always in their true trans- 

 posed evolutionary sense), that "the fear of the Lord is 

 the beginning of wisdom " ? or, in the words of a still 

 higher, a kindlier form of religion, that " it is a fearful 

 thing to fall into the hands of the living God " ? And 

 yet, even in this humble, lowly form of religion, there 

 are fetiches to guard the family interests separate from 

 the individual fetich with its purely personal, selfish 

 interests. Says a writer: 1 "Respect for the family 

 1 Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 158-160. 



