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The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Note 513 — Chapter IV · TOTEMIC BELIEFS—end The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem

Joseph Ward Swain translation

Thus the line of demarcation between the animal protectors and fetishes, which Frazer has attempted to establish, does not exist. According to him, fetishism commences when the protector is an individual object and not a class (Totemism, p. 56); but it frequently happens in Australia that a determined animal takes this part (see Howitt, Australian Medicine Men, J.A.I., XVI, p. 34). The truth is that the ideas of fetish and fetishism do not correspond to any definite thing.

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