Note 20 — Chapter I · RELIGIOUS PHYSICS.

Fetichism, M. Réville also says, is logically a later belief. “A fetich is a vulgar object, possessing no value in itself, but which a negro preserves, venerates, adores, because he believes that it is the dwelling place of a spirit. And the choice of the said object is not absolutely arbitrary. A fetich possesses this very special distinction, that it is the property of the person who adores it. It is in this element of individual ownership—ownership by the tribe or the family—that the difference clearly appears between the object of a naturist religion, and the fetich, properly so called. However humble it may be—tree, rock, or rivulet—the first is independent, is accessible to all, to strangers as to indigenes, on the sole condition that they conform to the exigencies of the ritual or the cult. The sun shines for everybody, the mountain is accessible to all who scale its sides, the spring refreshes the passer-by, whatever be his tribe; the very tree which rises in the midst of the desert asks of the traveller some mark of deference, and does not trouble itself about his origin. One cannot appropriate a natural object. It is otherwise with a fetich. Once adopted by a family, it is in some sort in the service of that family and has nothing to do with others.” This definition of fetichism is quite special, and in no wise concerns primitive fetichism, conceived as an ascription of something analogous to the human will in all inanimate things.