Note 241 — Chapter VI

The word “fetichism” is a corruption of the Portuguese term feitiço, “charm,” derived probably from the Latin factitius, in the sense “full of magical artifices,” which the first navigators on the coast of Guinea applied to the fetiches venerated by the Negroes. Des Brosses was the first to introduce, in 1760, the term “fetichism” to denote the belief in fetiches. Auguste Comte gave a much more extended meaning to the word, to denote a religious state opposed to polytheism and monotheism. To-day the fetichism of Auguste Comte is the animism of English ethnographers, of which true fetichism forms only a part. (E. Tylor, Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 143.)