Part 10

Offerings of food and drink are placed before them daily, and sometimes a cock is sacrificed; occasionally, if the worshippers are rich, a sheep is killed, ‘which they offer up to the gods in words alone, for they immediately fall upon it and tear it to pieces with their fingers’ (54, xvi. 400).

The personal interest of the fetishes in the affairs of their worshippers is seen in the ceremonies connected with the death and burial of the Fiote. ‘When all are assembled, the elder addresses the two family fetishes held by two of the family. Pointing and shaking his hand at them, he tells them how the deceased died, and all the family has done to settle the matter; he tells them how they have allowed the father to be taken, and prays them to protect the rest of the family; and when he has finished his address the two who hold the fetishes pick up a little earth and throw it on the heads of the fetishes, then, lifting them up, rub their heads in the earth in front of them’ (13, 135).

11. The fetish is =petted or ill-treated with regard to its past or future behaviour=. The spirit is invited to enter the suhman charm prepared for it by promises of offerings and food (16, 100), and special offerings are made before embarking on any great enterprise.

But when conciliation fails, the owner sometimes has resort to force, though Colonel Ellis states that in all his experience of the natives of the Gold Coast he has never seen or heard of any coercion of a fetish by the natives, and that the idea of coercion is entirely foreign to their minds (15, 194). The Kafirs appear to be harsher in their methods.

‘The Caffres play at a game of chance before their idols, and, should chance be against them, kick and box their idols; but if, after this correction, on pursuing their experiments they should continue unsuccessful, they burn the hands and feet of them in the fire; should ill fortune still attend them, they cast the idols on the ground, tread them under foot, dash them about with such force as to break them to pieces. Some, indeed, who show greater veneration for the images, content themselves with fettering and binding them until they have obtained their end; but should this not take place as early as their impatience looks for, they fasten them to a cord and gradually let them down into the water, even to the bottom, thus trusting to force them to be propitious; if after this good fortune should not follow, the idols are then withdrawn from the water, the patience of even the milder Caffres becomes exhausted, and the images are subjected to the grossest indignations’ (54, xvi. 696).

The negro in Guinea beats his fetish if his wishes are frustrated, and hides it in his waist-cloth when he is about to do something of which he is ashamed (38, 91).

III. FETISHISM AS A FORM OF RELIGIOUS WORSHIP

Fetishism is a stage of religious development associated with a low grade of consciousness and of civilisation, and it forms a basis from which many other modes of religious thought have developed, so that it is difficult to point out where fetishism ends and nature-worship, ancestor-worship, totemism, polytheism, and idolatry begin, or to distinguish between a fetish, an idol, and a deity.

It includes conceptions which are purely magical, coercion of the supernatural by means of natural objects; and it also includes conceptions which persist into higher forms of religion, such as the worship of the symbol of an unseen power.

It is an early product of the primitive religious instinct of humanity, developing at a low grade of culture among a people of a highly imaginative temperament.

The fundamental religious feeling which is everywhere part of the mental equipment of man has been called by Marett supernaturalism, and is perhaps best indicated in English by the term awe, in which word are implicated fear, wonder, admiration, interest, respect, even love, perhaps. The object of this religious ‘sense,’ or, as many would call it, ‘instinct,’ is the supernatural. The recognition of the supernatural, the fundamental religious feeling of awe, develops in two ways. ‘There arises in the region of human thought a powerful impulse to objectify, and even personify, the mysterious or ‘supernatural’ something felt; and in the region of will a corresponding impulse to render it innocuous, or, better still, propitious, by force of constraint, communion, or conciliation’ (50, 168).

So man personifies the power which he cannot understand, calling it by names which we translate as spirit or god, and he worships it, propitiating and conciliating it by offerings and sacrifice, and entering into communion with it by prayer. Thus are produced the two fundamental factors of religion, the belief in some mysterious power, and the desire to enter into communication with the power by means of worship. The worship of different groups of peoples expresses itself in different ways, reflecting the mental type of the worshippers, their civilisation, their culture, their character and temperament.

The cold, practical, phlegmatic Northerners worship within bare walls, while the fervour of the imaginative South demands expression in an elaborate ritual, with richness of decoration, warmth of colour, dim lights and soft music.

The extraordinarily vivid imagination and the childlike capacity for ‘make-believe’ of the negro, load him further still; the lively fancy of the West African demands a visible object to which worship may be directed. He wishes really and sensibly to behold and even to possess his god, so he incorporates him in a tangible object, and satisfies his religious ardour by directing his worship to that object. Thus fetishism and the fetish are evolved.

FOOTNOTES

Philosophie Positive.

Historische Nachrichten zur Kenntniss der Menschen.

For the references to the suggestive use of the word by Plautus, I am indebted to Miss Rachel White of Newnham College.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. ALLEN, J. Modern Judaism. London: Hamilton, 1816.

2. ARMIT, W. E. ‘Customs of the Australian Aborigines.’ Journ. Anth. Inst., ix. London, 1880.

3. ARNOT, FRED. S. Garenganze, or Seven Years’ Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa. London: Hawkins, 1889.

4. BATCHELOR, J. The Ainu and their Folk-Lore. London: Religious Tract Society, 1901.

5. BOGORAS, W. ‘The Chuckchee.’ The Jessup North Pacific Expedition, vii. (1) Leiden: Brill; New York: Stachert, 1904.

6. BRINTON, D. G. The Religions of Primitive Peoples. New York: Putnams, 1897.

7. —— The Myths of the New World; a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America (3rd Ed.) Philadelphia: M’Kay, 1896.

8. BROSSES, CH. DE. Du culte des dieux fétiches. Paris: 1760.

9. BURTON, R. F. Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomé. London: Tinsley Bros., 1864.