CHAPTER XXI: IDOL-WORSHIP AND FETICH-WORSHIP.

§ 154. Facts already named show how sacrifices to the man recently dead, pass into sacrifices to his preserved body. In § 137 we saw that to the corpse of a Tahitian chief, daily offerings were made on an altar by a priest; and the ancient Central Americans performed kindred rites before bodies dried by artificial heat. That, as embalming developed, this grew into mummy-worship, Peruvians and Egyptians have furnished proof. Here the thing to be observed is that, while believing the ghost of the dead man to have gone away, these peoples had confused notions, either that it came back into the mummy, or that the mummy was itself conscious. Among the Egyptians, this was implied by the practice of sometimes placing their embalmed dead at table. The Peruvians, who by a parallel custom betrayed a like belief, betrayed it in other ways also. By some of them the dried corpse of a parent was carried round the fields that he might see the state of the crops. How the ancestor, thus recognized as present, was also recognized as exercising authority, we see in a story narrated by Santa Cruz. When his second sister refused to marry him, Huayna Ccapac “went with presents and offerings to the body of his father, praying him to give her for his wife, but the dead body gave no answer, while fearful signs appeared in the heavens.”

The primitive notion that any property characterizing an aggregate inheres in all parts of it, implies a corollary Edition: current; Page: [307] from this belief. The soul, present in the body of the dead man preserved entire, is also present in preserved parts of his body. Hence the faith in relics. In the Sandwich Islands, bones of kings and principal chiefs were carried about by their descendants, under the belief that the spirits exercised guardianship over them. The Crees carry bones and hair of deceased relatives about for three years. The Caribs, and several Guiana tribes, have their cleaned bones “distributed among the relatives after death.” The Tasmanians show “anxiety to possess themselves of a bone from the skull or the arms of their deceased relatives.” The Andamanese “widows may be seen with the skulls of their deceased partners suspended from their necks.”

This belief in the power of relics leads in some cases to direct worship of them. The natives of Lifu, Loyalty Islands, who “invoke the spirits of their departed chiefs,” also “preserve relics of their dead, such as a finger-nail, a tooth, a tuft of hair, . . . and pay divine homage to it.” “In cases of sickness, and other calamities,” New Caledonians “present offerings of food to the skulls of the departed.” Moreover, we have the evidence furnished by conversation with a relic. “In the private fetish-hut of the King Adólee, at Badagry, the skull of that monarch’s father is preserved in a clay vessel placed in the earth.” He “gently rebukes it if his success does not happen to answer his expectations.” Similarly among the Mandans, who place the skulls of their dead in a circle, each wife knows the skull of her former husband or child,

Thus propitiation of the man just dead leads to propitiation of his preserved body, or a preserved part of it; and the ghost is supposed to be present in each.

§ 155. Any one asked to imagine a transition from worship of the preserved body, or a preserved part of it, to idol-worship, would probably fail; but transitions occur.

The object worshipped is sometimes a figure of the deceased, made partly of his remains and partly of other substances. Landa says the Yucatanese—

The Mexicans had a different method of joining some of the deceased’s substance with an effigy of him. When a dead lord had been burned, “they carefully collected the ashes, and after having kneaded them with human blood, they made of them an image of the deceased, which was kept in memory of him.” And from Camargo we also learn that images of the dead were worshipped.

A transitional combination partially unlike in kind is found: sometimes the ashes are contained in a man-shaped receptacle of clay. Among the Yucatanese—

And in yet other cases there is worship of the relics joined with the representative figure, not by inclusion but only by proximity. Speaking of the Mexicans, Gomara says that having burnt the body of their deceased king, they gathered up the ashes, bones, jewels, and gold, in cloths, and made a Edition: current; Page: [309] figure dressed as a man, before which, as well as before the relics, offerings were placed.

Lastly may be named the practice of the Egyptians, who as their frescoes show, often worshipped the mummy not as exposed to view, but as inclosed in a case shaped and painted to represent the dead man.

§ 156. From these examples of transition we may turn to those in which funeral propitiations are made to a substituted image.

The Mexicans practised cremation; and when men killed in battle were missing, they made figures of them, and after honouring these burnt them. Again,

In Africa kindred observances occur. While a deceased king of Congo is being embalmed, a figure is set up in the palace to represent him, and is daily furnished with food and drink. Among the Abyssinians mourning takes place on the third day; and the deceased having been buried on the day of his death, a representation of the corpse does duty instead. Some Papuan Islanders, after a grave is filled up, collect round an idol and offer provisions to it. Concerning certain Javans, Raffles says that after a death a feast is held, in which a man-shaped figure, “supported round the body by the clothes of the deceased,” plays an important part.

These practices look strange to us; but a stranger thing is that we have so soon forgotten the like practices of civilized nations. When Charles VI of France was buried,

Speaking of the father of the great Condé, Mme. de Motteville says—“The effigy of this prince was waited upon (servit) for three days, as was customary:” forty days having been the original time during which food was supplied to such an effigy at the usual hours. Monstrelet describes a like figure used at the burial of Henry V of England; and figures of many English monarchs, thus honoured at their funerals, are still preserved in Westminster Abbey: the older having decayed into fragments.

With these reminders before us, we can have little difficulty in understanding the primitive ideas respecting such representations. When we read that the Coast Negroes in some districts “place several earthen images on the graves;” that the Araucanians fixed over a tomb an upright log, “rudely carved to represent the human frame;” that after the deaths of New Zealand chiefs, wooden images, 20 to 40 ft. high, were erected as monuments; we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the figure of the dead man is an incipient idol. Could we doubt, our doubting would end on finding the figure persistently worshipped. Jos. de Acosta says of the Peruvians that—

So, too, according to Andagoya,

And the Yucatanese “worshipped the idol of one who is said to have been one of their great captains.”

§ 157. That we may understand better the feelings with which a savage looks at a representative figure, let us recall the feelings produced by representations among ourselves.

When a lover kisses the miniature of his mistress, he is obviously influenced by an association between the appearance and the reality. Even more strongly do such associations sometimes act. A young lady known to me confesses that she cannot bear to sleep in a room having portraits on the walls; and this repugnance is not uncommon. In such cases the knowledge that portraits consist of paint and canvas only, fails to expel the suggestion of something more. The vivid representation so strongly arouses the thought of a living person, that this cannot be kept out of consciousness.

Now suppose culture absent—suppose there exist no ideas of attribute, law, cause—no distinctions between natural and unnatural, possible and impossible. This associated consciousness of a living presence will then persist. No conflict with established knowledge arising, the unresisted suggestion will become a belief.

In § 133, beliefs thus produced in savages were incidentally referred to. Here are some further examples of them. The North American Indians think portraits supernatural, and look at them with the same ceremony as at a dead person. The Okanagans “have the same aversion that has been noted on the coast” to having their portraits taken. The Mandans thought the life put into a picture was so much life taken from the original. Catlin says—

Nor do more advanced races fail to supply kindred facts. Edition: current; Page: [312] In Madagascar, friends of a prince, on seeing a photograph of him, took off their hats to it and verbally saluted it.

That which holds of a picture holds of an image—holds even more naturally; since the carved representation being solid, approaches closer to the reality. Where the image is painted and has eyes inserted, this notion of participation in the vitality of the person imitated becomes, in the uncritical mind of the savage, very strong. Any one who remembers the horror a child shows on seeing an adult put on an ugly mask, even when the mask has been previously shown to it, may conceive the awe which a rude effigy excites in the primitive mind. The sculptured figure of the dead man arouses the thought of the actual dead man, which passes into a conviction that he is present.

§ 158. And why should it not? If the other-self can leave the living body and re-enter it—if the ghost can come back and animate afresh the dead body—if the embalmed Peruvian, presently to be revived by his returned double, was then to need his carefully-preserved hair and nails—if the soul of the Egyptian, after its transmigrations occupying some thousands of years, was expected to infuse itself once more into his mummy; why should not a spirit go into an image? A living body differs more from a mummy in texture, than a mummy does from wood. Obviously this was the reasoning of the Egyptians who provided for the ka, or double, of a dead man, a statue or statues entombed with his dried body, as substitutes for it should it be destroyed. M. Maspéro writes:—

Whence it is inferable that the Egyptians regarded the statues of gods and kings as occasional habitations for their ghosts.

That a savage thinks an effigy is inhabited we have abundant proofs. Among the Yorubans, a mother carries for some time a wooden figure of her lost child, and when she eats, puts part of her food to its lips. The Samoiedes “feed the wooden images of the dead.” The relatives of an Ostyak—

Erman, who states this, adds the significant fact that the descendants of deceased priests preserve the images of their ancestors from generation to generation;

These Ostyaks, indeed, show us unmistakably how the dead man’s effigy passes into the divine idol; for the worships of the two are identical. At each meal, placing the dishes before the household god, they wait (i. e., fast) till “the idol, who eats invisibly, has had enough.” Moreover, when a Samoiede goes on a journey, “his relatives direct the idol towards the place to which he is gone, in order that it may look after him.” How, among more advanced peoples in these regions, there persists the idea that the idol of the god, Edition: current; Page: [314] developed as we have seen from the effigy of the dead man, is the residence of a conscious being, is implied by the following statement of Erman respecting the Russians of Irkutsk:—

Like beliefs are displayed by other races wholly unallied. After a death in a Sandwich-Island family, the survivors worship “an image with which they imagine the spirit is in some way connected;” and “Oro, the great national idol, was generally supposed to give the responses to the priests.” Of the Yucatanese we read that “when the Itzaex performed any feat of valour, their idols, whom they consulted, were wont to make reply to them;” and Villagutierre describes the beating of an idol said to have predicted the arrival of the Spaniards, but who had deceived them respecting the result. Even more strikingly shown is this implication in the Quiché legend. Here is an extract:—

Nor is it among inferior races only that conceptions of this kind are found. Dozy, describing the ideas and practices of idolatrous Arabians, quotes this story:—

Of kindred beliefs in classic times, an instance is furnished by the statements respecting the so-called vocal Memnon. Among the inscriptions made by visitors on its pedestal, here is one signed Gemellus:—“Once the son of Saturn, great Jove, had made thee monarch of the East; now thou art but a stone; and it is from a stone that thy voice proceeds.” Similarly with the beliefs of early Christians, implied by the miracles narrated in the Apocryphal Gospels. “Coming into India, the Apostle Bartholomew entered a temple, in which was the idol Ashtaroth.” . . . At the wish of the king, he agrees to expel the demon, and next day engages in a dialogue with him. . . . “Then the apostle commands him—‘If thou dost not wish to be hurled into the abyss, come forth from the image and break it, and go forth into the desert.’ ”

The proofs, then, are many and conclusive. The savage, thinking the effigy of the dead man is inhabited by his ghost, propitiates it accordingly; and as the effigy of the dead man develops into the idol of the god, the sacrifices to it are made under a kindred belief in a spiritual resident.

§ 159. What degree of likeness to a human being suffices to suggest the presence of a human soul? These images the savage makes are very rude. The carved post he sticks on a grave, or the little stone figure he hangs round his neck instead of an actual relic of a relative, resembles but remotely a human being, and not at all the individual commemorated. Still it suffices. And considering how easily the primitive mind, unchecked by scepticism, accepts the slightest suggestion, we may expect that even smaller likenesses will suffice. A dead tree outstretching its remaining arms in a strange way, or a rock of which the profile seen against the sky recalls a face, will arouse the idea of a human inhabitant. Merely noting, however, that such accidental Edition: current; Page: [316] similarities aid in extending to various objects the notion of resident ghosts, let us observe the more potent causes of fetichistic beliefs.

In § 54 we saw how the discovery of plants and animals imbedded in rock, prepares the mind to suspect animation in certain inanimate things. Here is a fossil shell; there are the remains of a fish changed into stone. If wood, retaining all its fibrous appearance, may become flint, may not a man also turn into this dense substance? And if the dry, hard body of a mummy may be entered by its soul—if a wooden image may be so too; may not souls be present in petrified masses that look like parts of men? See these bones which have been dug up—heavy, stony, but in shape sufficiently like human bones to deceive the savage; as, in fact, such bones have, in past times, habitually deceived the civilized, leading to stories of giant races. What is to be thought of them? Are they not, like other human remains, frequented by the doubles to which they once belonged? Will they not some day be re-animated?

Be this or be it not the origin of reverence for stones, this reverence is certainly in some cases accompanied by the belief that they were once men, and that they will eventually revive as men. Already I have named the fact that the Laches “worshipped every stone as a god, as they said that they had all been men.” Arriaga says the Peruvians “worship certain heights and mountains, and very large stones . . . saying that they were once men.” Avendaño argued with them thus:—

Such stones stand in the same relation to the inhabiting ghosts that mummies do: witness Arriaga’s statement that the Marcayoc who is worshipped as the patron of the village, Edition: current; Page: [317] “is sometimes a stone and sometimes a mummy.” They also stand in the same relation to ghosts that idols do: witness the statement of Montesinos, that the Ynca Rocca “caused to be thrown from the mountain [a certain idol]. . . . They say that a parrot flew out of it and entered another stone, which is still shown in the valley. The Indians have greatly honoured it since that time, and still worship it.” And this belief was definitely expressed when in 1560, the native priests, describing the ancestral ghosts or huacas as enraged with those who had become Christians, said “the times of the Yncas would be restored, and the huacas would not enter into stones or fountains to speak, but would be incorporated in men whom they will cause to speak.” The Coast Negroes betray kindred ideas. In some towns, when a person dies, a stone is taken to a certain house provided; and among the Bulloms, certain women “make occasional sacrifices and offerings of rice to the stones which are preserved in memory of the dead. They prostrate themselves before these.”

This last instance introduces us to another mode in which fetichistic conceptions arise. Already the practices of sorcerers have familiarized us with the primitive belief that each person’s nature inheres not only in all parts of his body, but in his dress and the things he has used. Probably the interpretation of odour has led to this belief. If the breath is the spirit or other-self, is not this invisible emanation which permeates a man’s clothing, and by which he may be traced, also a part of his other-self? Various derivations show us this connexion of ideas. Perfume and fume coming from a word applied to smoke or vapour, are thus brought into relation with the visible vapour of breath. Exhalation is that which breathes out of. In Latin, nidor was applicable alike to a steam and a smell; and the German duft, used for a delicate odour, originally meant vapour. Just as we now speak of the “breath of flowers” as equivalent to their fragrance; so, in early speech, did men associate smell with Edition: current; Page: [318] expired air, which was identified with soul. Have we not, indeed, ourselves come to use the word spirit, similarly having reference to breath, for the odorous steam which distils from a thing; and may not the savage therefore naturally regard the spirit as having entered that to which the odour clings? However this may be, we find proof that not dress only, but even stones, are supposed to become permeated by this invisible emanation, existing either as breath or as odour. When a noble died in Vera Paz, “the first thing they did after his death was to put a precious stone in his mouth. Others say that they did this, not after his death, but in his last moments. The object of it was that the stone received his soul.” A kindred notion is implied by a practice of the Mexicans, who, along with a man’s remains, “put a gem of more or less value, which they said would serve him in place of a heart in the other world:” heart and soul being, with sundry American peoples, convertible terms. Under another form the idea meets us among the New Zealanders. Mr. White, who in Te Rou embodies many New Zealand superstitions, narrates a discussion concerning the ghosts of the dead, in which an old man says—

Thus the original belief is that as a dead body, or a mummy, or an effigy, may be entered by a spirit; so, too, may a shapeless stone. Adoration of inanimate objects thus possessed by ghosts, is really adoration of the indwelling ghosts; and the powers ascribed to such objects are the powers ascribed to such ghosts.

§ 160. This notion, once established, develops in all directions. A ready explanation of everything remarkable is furnished. When ghosts, accumulating and losing their once-remembered individualities, are thought of as a multitude of invisible beings—when they are here conceived as elbowing the inhabitants of the house, there as swarming in the nooks of the forests, elsewhere as so numerous that a thing cannot be thrown aside without danger of hitting one; it happens, inevitably, that being always at hand they become the assigned causes of unfamiliar occurrences. Instances are furnished by every race.

In Africa the Bulloms regard with awe, as implying spirit-agency, “whatever appears to them strange or uncommon.” By the Congo people, certain shells are called “God’s children;” and the Negroes of Little Addoh (on the Niger), astonished at the size of a European vessel, worshipped it. The like holds in Polynesia. A sledge left by Cook or his companions was worshipped by the natives. A cocoa-nut tree in Fiji, which divided into two branches, “was consequently regarded with great veneration.” Similarly in America. Supernaturalness is alleged of “anything which a Dakotah cannot comprehend;” and by the Mandans all unusual things are deemed supernatural. If the Chippewas “do not understand anything, they immediately say, it is a spirit” and the same notion was dominant among the ancient Peruvians, who “did worship all things in nature which seemed to them remarkable and different from the rest, as acknowledging some particular deitie.”

Thus the unusualness which makes an object a fetich, is supposed to imply an indwelling ghost—an agent without which deviation from the ordinary would be inexplicable. There is no tendency gratuitously to ascribe duality of nature; but only when there is an unfamiliar appearance, or motion, or sound, or change, in a thing, does there arise this idea of a possessing spirit. The Chibchas worshipped “at lakes, rivulets, rocks, hills, and other places of striking or Edition: current; Page: [320] unusual aspect:” saying that by certain occurrences “the demon had given a sign that they should worship him at such places.” The implication here so manifest, that one of the haunting invisible beings is the object of adoration, is again shown us by the Hindus. Sir A. C. Lyall, though he thinks that their fetichism has become a kind of Pantheism, so states the results of his Indian experiences that they perfectly harmonize with the interpretation here given. He says—

So that indirect evidences from all sides, converge to the conclusion that the fetich-worship is the worship of a special soul supposed to have taken up its abode in the fetich; which soul, in common with supernatural agents at large, is originally the double of a dead man.

§ 161. But we need not rest with indirect evidence of this. Direct evidence is abundant.

Many pages back, facts were given showing that originally the fetich is nothing but the ghost. While, in § 58, we saw that the Abipones, fearing the ghost, thought “the echo was its voice;” we saw that the African, when asked why he made an offering to the echo, answered—“Did you not hear the fetish?” In East Africa the fetich-huts have food and beer placed in them “to propitiate the ghosts.” The Coast Negroes who, worshipping the dead, perform “pilgrimages to their graves to make oblations and sacrifices”—who mould clay figures of their departed chiefs—who sometimes have tubes leading down to the buried corpses, through which they daily pour libations; show us by various associated observances, that the fetich is the residence of the ghost. The natives round Sierra Leone “seldom or never Edition: current; Page: [321] drink spirits, wine, etc., without spilling a little of it upon the ground, and wetting the greegree or fetish;” Cruikshank mentions certain foods abstained from according to the direction of the fetich; Bastian names a fetich-man who used ventriloquism in announcing the oracles;—facts all implying notions like those which elsewhere go along with ghost-worship. Speaking of a village on the Niger where the fetich was a carved image, Lander says—“We were desired to roast our bullock under him, that he might enjoy the savoury smell.” And in Dahomey “the roads, villages, and houses are filled with fetich-images and sacrifices to the fetich.” Whether the fetich is a bundle of things belonging to a relative who has died, or an effigy of this deceased person, or an idol that has lost historic individuality, or some other object, the resident spirit is nothing but a modification of an ancestral ghost, deviating more or less according to circumstances. The certainty of this conclusion is best shown by the summarized statement Beecham makes.

And if this occasional visibility, this need for food, and this difference of sex, are not enough to show the original human nature of the fetich, it is conclusively shown by the following statement of Bastian about the Congo people.

So that the fetich, besides otherwise corresponding to the ghost, corresponds as being expected to resume, in like manner, the original bodily form.

§ 162. We will now draw a corollary from this interpretation of fetichism, and observe how completely it harmonizes with the facts.

Evidence has been given that sundry low types of men have either no ideas of revival after death, or vague and wavering ideas: the conception of a ghost is undeveloped. If, as contended above, the worship of the fetich is the worship of an indwelling ghost, or a supernatural being derived from the ghost; it follows that the fetich-theory, being dependent on the ghost-theory, must succeed it in order of time. Absent where there is no ghost-theory, fetichism will arise after the ghost-theory has arisen. That it does this, proofs are abundant.

Of the Indian Hill-tribes may be named, as about the lowest known, the Juángs, who, with no word for a supernatural being, with no idea of another life, with no ancestor-worship, have also no fetichism: an accompanying absence of witchcraft being also noteworthy. The Andaman Islanders, classed with the most degraded of mankind, who are without a “notion of their own origin,” and without a notion “of a future existence,” are also without fetichism: such, at least, is the conclusion we may draw from the silence of those who describe them. Of the Fuegians, too, among whom no appearances of religion were found by Cook, no fetichism is alleged. Nor have those very inferior savages the Australians, though they believe in ghosts, reached the stage at which the ghost-theory originates this derivative theory: they do not propitiate inanimate objects. Their now-extinct neighbours, too, the Tasmanians, like them in grade, were like them in this. And even the Veddahs, who, thinking the souls of their relatives are everywhere around, have a dominant ancestor-worship, but whose intelligence and social state are extremely low, do not show us this extension of the ghost-theory.

The implications of a doctrine do not occur to the utterly stupid; but they become obvious to those who begin Edition: current; Page: [323] to think. Hence, in proportion as the reasoning faculty is good, will be the number of erroneous conclusions drawn from erroneous premises. As was pointed out in §§ 57 and 96, it is not savages devoid of intelligence, but highly intelligent savages, such as the Fijians, who believe that a man has two souls, his shadow and his reflection; and who accept the inference that, as objects have shadows, they too must have souls. The various African peoples even taken by themselves, suffice to show that fetichism, arises only when a certain stage of mental and social evolution has been reached. No fetichism is alleged of the Bushmen; and of the African races whose state is known to us, the Bushmen are the lowest. The Damaras, among whom, according to Andersson, intelligence is “an unusual phenomenon,” and whose stupidity Galton exemplifies so vividly, have not drawn from their feebly-marked ghost-beliefs the inferences whence fetichism arises: Galton says—“of the fetish superstition there is no trace.” But fetichism meets us among the more advanced African races—the Congo people, the Inland Negroes, the Coast Negroes, the Dahomans, the Ashantees. We find it rampant where there are fortified towns, well-organized governments, large standing armies, prisons, police, and sumptuary laws, considerable division of labour, periodical markets, regular shops, and all the appliances showing some progress in civilization. Still more conspicuously is this relation exhibited in America. We do not read of fetichism among the rude Chirihuanas of ancient Peru; but among the civilized Peruvians it was immensely elaborated. Both before and after the Ynca conquest, “they worshipped herbs, plants, flowers, all kinds of trees, high hills, great rocks, and the chinks in them, hollow caves, pebbles, and small stones of different colours.” And then, if we ask where fetichism has culminated, we are referred to a people whose civilization, older in date than our own, has created vast cities, elaborate industries, a highly-structured Edition: current; Page: [324] language, great poems, subtle philosophies. In India,

And this statement of Dubois, quoted by Sir John Lubbock, coincides with that of Sir A. C. Lyall, who says—“Not only does the husbandman pray to his plough, the fisher to his net, the weaver to his loom; but the scribe adores his pen, and the banker his account-books.”

How untenable is the idea that fetichism comes first among superstitions, will now be manifest. Suppose the facts reversed. Suppose that by Juangs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tasmanians, and Bushmen, the worship of inanimate objects was carried to the greatest extent; that among tribes a little advanced in intelligence and social state, it was somewhat restricted; that it went on decreasing as knowledge and civilization increased; and that in highly-developed societies, such as those of ancient Peru and modern India, it became inconspicuous. Should we not say that the statement was conclusively proved? Clearly, then, as the facts happen to be exactly the opposite, the statement is conclusively disproved.

§ 163. Induction having shown the untruth of this current dogma, we are now prepared for seeing how entirely deduction discredits it.

Made on the strength of evidence given by early travellers, whose contact was chiefly with races partially advanced and even semi-civilized, the assertion that fetichism is primordial gained possession of men’s minds; and prepossession being nine points of belief, it has held its ground with scarcely a question. I had myself accepted it; though, as Edition: current; Page: [325] I remember, with some vague dissatisfaction, probably arising from inability to see how so strange an interpretation arose. This vague dissatisfaction passed into scepticism on becoming better acquainted with the ideas of savages. Tabulated facts presented by the lowest races, changed scepticism into disbelief; and thought has made it manifest that the statement, disproved a posteriori, is contrary to a priori probability.

In the chapter on “The Ideas of the Animate and Inanimate,” it was shown that progressing intelligence gives increasing power to discriminate the living from the not-living; that the higher animals rarely confound the one with the other; and that to suppose the animal which is far above the rest in sagacity, gratuitously confuses the two, is unwarrantable. Were the fetichistic conception primordial, it would be possible to show how the evolution of thought necessitated its antecedence; whereas this, so far as I see, is impossible. Consider the mind of the savage as delineated in foregoing chapters—unspeculative, uncritical, incapable of generalizing, and with scarcely any notions save those yielded by the perceptions. Ask what could lead him to think of an inanimate object as having in it some existence besides that which his senses acquaint him with? He has no words for separate properties, much less a word for property in general; and if he cannot even conceive a property apart from an aggregate displaying it, how can he imagine a second invisible entity as causing the actions of the visible entity? He has neither that tendency to think which must precede such a conception, nor has he the mental power required to grasp such a conception. Only as the ghost-theory evolves, does there arise, when circumstances suggest it, this idea of an animate agent in an inanimate object. I say advisedly—when circumstances suggest it; for at first he does not gratuitously assume spiritual possession. Something anomalous is requisite to suggest the presence of a spirit. And if afterwards, in higher stages of Edition: current; Page: [326] progress, he extends such interpretations, and thinks of multitudinous things as possessed, the antecedent is an accumulation of ghosts and derived spirits swarming everywhere.

That fetichism is a sequence of the ghost-theory might, indeed, be suspected from the evidence which our own people have furnished, and still furnish. I do not specially refer to the still extant doctrine of the real presence; nor to the belief implied by the obsolete practice of exorcising the water used in baptism; nor to the conceptions of those who in past times thought objects which behaved strangely were “possessed,” though they did not assume possession to account for the ordinary powers of objects. I refer chiefly to the evidence which modern spiritualists yield us. If tables turn and chairs move about without visible agency, spirits are the assumed agents. In presence of some action not understood, there is a revival of the fetichistic interpretation: the cause is a supernatural being, and this supernatural being is a ghost.

§ 164. Propitiation of the dead, which, originating funeral rites, develops into the observances constituting worship in general, has thus, among its other divergent results, idol-worship and fetich-worship. All stages in the genesis of these are traceable.

There are sacrifices to the recently-dead body, to the dried body or mummy, to the relics; there are sacrifices to a figure made partly of the relics and partly of other substances; there are sacrifices to a figure placed on a box containing the relics; there are sacrifices to a figure placed on the grave containing the remains. And as thus combined, the remains and the representative figure have been in kindred ways worshipped by civilized races—Egyptians, Etruscans, Romans, down to mediæval Christians; for does not the adored figure of a saint above his tomb, undeniably correspond to the carved effigy which the savage places on a grave and propitiates? That this representative Edition: current; Page: [327] image of the dead man grows into the idol of the deity, we have good evidence. Persistent for various periods, the worship becomes in some cases permanent; and then constitutes the idolatry of the savage, which evolves into elaborate religious ceremonies performed before awe-inspiring statues in magnificent temples. Further, from the primitive notion that along with likeness in aspect there goes likeness in nature, comes a belief that the effigy is inhabited by the ghost; and from this there descends the notion that deities enter idols and occasionally speak from them.

Between idol-worship and fetich-worship there is no break. In Africa the visible fetich is often a man-shaped figure, sometimes a figure less like a man, resembling “nothing so much as one of our scare-crows;” and sometimes a thing human only in its connexions, having the character of an amulet: the faith in which, as we saw (§ 133), grows from a faith in relics, and therefore arises from the ghost-theory. That the worship of things which are strange in size, shape, aspect, or behaviour, is derivative, and goes along with belief in the presence of a spirit originally human, facts make clear. This extension accompanies growth and elaboration of the ghost-theory—occurs where ghosts are supposed to be ever-present causes of diseases, cures, accidents, benefits, etc.; and exhibits the unchecked application of an hypothesis which seems to explain everything. Beliefs thus originating are aided by the idea that shadows are souls. As we before saw (§ 96), this idea into which primitive men are naturally betrayed, they extend to other shadows than those cast by their own bodies. Gradually reason forces this implication on them; and acceptance of it strengthens those conceptions of object-souls otherwise reached. Proof that the thing worshipped in the remarkable object is a ghost, is in some cases joined with proof that it is an ancestral ghost. The huacas of the Peruvians were their forefathers. Edition: current; Page: [328] Garcilasso says “an Indian is not looked upon as honourable unless he is descended from a fountain, river, or lake (or even the sea); or from a wild animal, such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur [condor], or some other bird of prey; or from a mountain, cave, or forest;” and these huacas whence they descended, they worshipped.

That idolatry and fetichism are aberrant developments of ancestor-worship, thus made sufficiently clear, will become clearer still on passing to the kindred groups of facts which now follow.