Like beliefs are displayed by other races wholly un- allied. Of the Sandwich Islanders, Ellis tells us that after a death in a taxmij, the surviyors worship ''an image with which they imagine the spirit is in some way con- nected ''; and also that " Oro, the great national idol, was generally supposed to give the responses to the priests/' Concerning the Yucatanese, Fancourt, quoting CogoUudo, says that "when the Itzaex performed any feat of valour, their idols, whom they consulted, were wont to make reply to them''; and, quoting Villagutierre, he describes the beating of an idol said to have predicted the arriyal of the Spaniards, but who had deceived them respecting the result. Even more strikingly shown is this implication in the Quich^ legend. Here is an extract from Bancroft: — "And they worshipped the gods that had become stone, Toliil, Avilix, and Hacavitz; and they offered them the blood of beasts, and of birds, and pierced their own ears and shoulders in honour of these gods, and collected the blood with a sponge, and pressed it out into a cup before them. * * * And these three gods, petrified, as we have told, could nevertheless resume a movable shape when they pleased; which, indeed, they often did."
Nor is it among inferior races only that conceptions of this kind are found. In his Histoire des Mtisulmans cTEspagne, Dozy, describing the ideas and practices of the idolatrous Arabians, says — *' When Amrolcaas set out to revenge the death of his fSather on the Beni-Asad, he stopped at the temple of the idol Dhou-1-Kholosa to make a consultation by means of the three arrows called conmiand prohibition, expectation. Having drawn prohibition, he recommenced drawing. But three times he drew prohibition. Thereupon he broke the arrows and throwing them into the idol's &ce, he shouted — * Wretch, 834 THX DATA OV SOCIOLOGT, if the killed man had been thy father, thon wouldst not forbid revenge ing him.' " Of kindred beliefs in classio times^ an instance is furnished by the statements respecting the so-called vocal Memnon. Among the inscriptictois 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 voioe proceeds/' Similarly with the beliefs of Christian writers, implied by the miracles they ascribe to certain apostles in the Apocryphal Gospels. ^'ConDdng into India, the Apostle Bartholomew entered a temple, in which was the idol As- taroth/' * * * 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 td be hurled into the abyss, come forth from the image and break it, and go forth into the de- sert.' *' — 8. BartholomoBi, capp. 1-6.
The proofs, then, are many and conclusive. Unable to dissociate appearance from reality, 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 image be hangs round his neck instead of an actual relic of a relative, resembles but remotely the 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 remain- ing arms in a strange way, or a rock of which the profile seen against the sky recalls a face^ will aroase the idea of a human inhabitant. Merely noting^ however^ that saoh acci- dental 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 ure the remains of a fish changed into stone. If^ as a silicified tree shows, wood retaining all its fibrous appecur- ance 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 f 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 f. Will they not some day be re-animated f 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 quoted from Piedrahita 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.'' Avendano argued with them thus: — '* Your wise men say that of old in Pnrmnpacha there were men» and now we see with our own eyes that they are stones, or hills, or rocks, or islands of the sea. « « • If these huacas originally were men, and had a father and mother, like ourselves, and then Contiviracocha has turned them into stones, they are worthless."
Such stones stand in the same relation to the inhabiting 836 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOaT.
ghosts tliat mummies do: witness Arriaga's statement that the Marcayoc who is worshipped as the patron of the village^ 'Ms 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 Bocca 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 is definitely expressed in Molina's account of a certain reaction towards the old creed in 1560, when native priests, describing the ancestral ghosts or huacas, as enraged with those who had been baptized, 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 would cause to speak." Similarly of the Coast Negroes Winterbottom tells us that in some towns, when a person dies, a stone is taken to a certain house provided; and among the Bulloms, women " make occasional sacrifices and offerings of rice to the stones which are preserved in memory of the dead. They prostrate themselves before these." Such facts, if they do not imply the belief that the dead man has become a stone, imply the belief that his ghost is present in it.
This last instance introduces us to another mode in which fetichistic conceptions arise. Already the practices of sorcerers have &miliarized 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 emana- tion 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 fwms coming from a word applied to smoke or vapour, are thus brought into relation with the visible vapour of breaih. Exhalation is that which breathes out of. ] n 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 the smell with the expired air, which was identified with the 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 f However this may be, we find clear proof that not dress only, but even stones, are supposed to become permeated by this invisible emanation, existing either as breath or as odour. According to Ximenez, when a lord 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 receive 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 some of these American peoples, convertible terms. Under another form the same idea meets us among the New Zealanders. Mr. White, who in Te Baou embodies many New Zealand superstitions, narrates a discussion concerning the ghosts of the dead, in which he represents an old man as saying — *' Are not all things the offering of the gods? Is not the komara the god that hid himself from fear? Do you not eat the kumara? Are not fish another god who went into the water? Do you not eat fish? Are not the birds also gods? Were not the gods spirits [t.^., ghosts of men]? Then, why are yon not afiraid of the things that you eat? Anything cooked sends the spirit into the stones on which they are cooked. Then, why do old people eat out of a hangi, and off tlie stones which hold the spirit of the food cooked on them? " Thus the original belief is that as a dead body, or a z 838 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOOT.
mummy^ or an effigy^ may be entered by a spirit; bo^ too^ may a sliapeless stone. All the evidence goes to show that adoration of inanimate objects thns possessed by ghosts^ is really adoration of the indwelling ghosts; and that the powers ascribed to such objects are the powers ascribed to such ghosts.
§ 160. Naturally 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 — ^wheu they are here conceived as elbowed by the inhabitants of the house, here as swarming in the nooks of the forests, here as so numerous that a thing cannot be thrown aside without danger of hitting one; it happens, inevitably, that being everywhere at hand they become the assigned causes of all unfamiliar things. 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, unknown shells are called '^ Ood's children''; and the Negroes in Nuffi (on the Niger), astonished at the size of a European vessel, worshipped it. The like holds in Polynesia. Ellis tells us that a sledge left by Cook or his companions was worshipped by the natives. A cocoa- nut tree in Fiji, which divided in two branches, '* was con- sequently regarded with great veneration." Similarly in America. Schoolcraft says supematuralness is alleged of " anything which a Dakotah cannot comprehend"; and that by the Mandans all unusual things are deemed supernatural. (X the Chippewas Buchanan tells us that ^' if they do not understand anything, they immediately say, it is a spirit "; and the same notion was dominant among the ancient Peruvians, who, according to J. d'Acosta, "worshipped anything in nature which seemed to them notable and different from others, aa recognizing in it some particnlar deity/' Thas tlie unofloalnefifi which makes an object a fetich, is supposed to imply an indwelling ghost — an agent without which deviation from the ordinary would be onacconntable. 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. Simon tells us of the Ghibchas that many worshipped '^ at lakes, rivulets, rocks, hills, and other places of striking or 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. Mr. Lyall, in the essay lately quoted, though he accepts that current view of fetiehism which I think erroneous, so states the results of his Indian experiences that they perfectly harmonize with the interpretation here given. He says — " It is not difficult to pereeive how this original downright adoration 4)f queer-looking objects, is modified by passing into the higher order oi imaginatiye superstition. First, the stone is the abode of some spirit; its curious shape or situation betraying pouesiion. Next, this strange form or aspect argues some design, or handiwork, of supernatural beings," etc., etc.
So that indirect evidence from all sides converges to the conclusion that the fetich-worship is the worship of a special soul sapposed to have taken up its abode in the fetich; which sonl^ 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 origin- ally 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 340 THE DATA OV SOCIOLOOT.
why lie made an offering to tlie echo, answered — ^^ Did you not hear the fetich f '^ In East Africa, Barton describes the fetich-huts as having food and beer placed in them ''to propitiate the ghosts/' The Coast Negroes who, wor- shipping 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. According to Winterbottom, the natives round Sierra Leone " seldom or never drink spirits, wine, etc., without spilling a little of it upon the ground, and wetting the grugru or fetich''; Cruikshank mentions certain foods abstained from accord- ing to the direction of the fetich; Beecham says the fetich- house forms a sort of sanctuary; 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. Lander, speaking of a village on the Niger where there was a carved image, the fetich, 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," according to Wilmot, 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 modi- fication of the ancestral ghost, deviating more or less accord- ing to circumstances. The certainty of this conclusion is best shown by the summarized statement Beecham makes.
**The fetiches are believed to be spiritual, intelligent beings, who make the remarkable objects of nature their residence, or enter occa- sionally into the images and other artificial representations, which have been duly cousecrated by certain ceremonies. It is the belief of the people that the fetiches not unfrequently render themselves visible to it mortalB. * * * They believe that these fetiches are of both sexes, and that they require food."
And if tliis 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.
" The natives say that the great fetich of Bamba lives in the bush, where no man sees him, or can see him. When he dies« the fetich- pziests carefully collect his bones in order to revive them, and nourish' them till they again acquire flesh and blood."
So that the fetich, besides otherwise answering to the ghost, answers as being expected to resume, in like manner, the original bodily form.
§ 162. We will now draw a corollary from this interpre- tation of fetichism, and observe how coinpletely it har- monizes with the facts.
Evidence has been given that various low types of men have either no ideas of a revival after death, or vag^e and wavering ideas: the conception of a ghost is undeveloped. If, as contended above, the worship oE 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 Judngs, who, with no word for a super- natural being, with no idea of another life, with no ances- tor-worship, have also no fetichism: an accompanying absence of witchcraft being also noteworthy. The Anda- man Islanders, classed with the most degraded of mankind, who are without a " notion of their own origin,'' and with- out a notion ''of a future existence,'' are also without fetichism: so, at least, may be concluded from the silence 342 THE DATA OF S0CI0L0Q7.
of those who describe them. Of the Fuegians, too^ among whom no appearances of religion were foond by Cook, no f etichism is alleged. Nor have those very inferior savages the Australians, though believing 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, think- ing the soids 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 exten- sion of the ghost-theory.
The implications of a doctrine do not occur to the uttiOrly stupid j but they become obvious to those who begin to think. Hence, in proportion as the reasoning &culty is good, will be the number of erroneous conclusions drawn from erro- neous premises. As was pointed out in §§ 57 and 96, it is not savages devoid of intelligence, but highly intelli- gent 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 evolu- tion 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 Oalton exemplifies so vividly, have not drawn from their feebly-marked ghost- beliefs the inferences whence fetichism arises: Galton says •—''of the fetich superstition there is no trace.'' Bat fetichism meets us among the more advanced African races — the Congo people, the Inland Negroes, the Coast Ne- groes, the Dahomans, the Ashantees. We find it rampant where there are fortified towns, well-organized governments.
lai^ standing armies^ prisonfi^ police, and samptaary laws, oonsiderable division of labour, periodical markets, regpilar shops, and all the appliances showing some progress in ciyUization. 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 civilissed 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 difEerent 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 language, great poems, subtle philosophies. In India, " A woman adores the basket which senres to bring or to hold her necessaries, and offers sacrifices to it; as well as to the rice-mill, and other implements that assist her in her household labours. A carpenter does the like homage to his hatchet, his adze, and other tools; and like- wise offers saoiifioes to them. A Brahman does so to the style with which he is going to write; a soldier to the anns he is to use in the field; a mason to his troweL" And this statement of Dubois, quoted by Sir John Lub- bock, coincides with that of Mr. Lyall in his '' Beligion of an Indian Province.'' "Not only," he says, ''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 Ju&ngs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tasmaniaos, and Bushmen, the worship of inanimaie 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 decreas- ing as knowledge and civilization increased; and that in highly^developed societies, such as those of ancient Peru 344 THE DATA OF SpCIOLOGT* and modem India^ it became inconspicaons. Shotdd we not say that tlie statement was conclusively proved f 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 de- duction discredits it.
Made on the strength of evidence furnished by early travellers, whose contact was chiefly with races partially advanced and even semi-civilized, the assertion that fetich- ism 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 I remember, with some vague dissatisfac- tion, 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 evidence presented by the lowest races, changed scepticism into disbelief; and thought has made it manifest that the statement, disproved d paste" rioi-i, 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 pri- mordial, 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^ mach less a word for property in general; and if he cannot eren con- ceiye a property apart from an aggregate presenting i1>— cannot conceive coloar apart from particular objects coloured — ^how can he imagine a second invisible entity as causing the actions of the visible entity f 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 progress of thought evolves the ghost-theory^ 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 ano- malous is requisite to suggest the presence of a spirit. And if afterwards, in higher stages of progress, he extends such interpretations, so as to think of multitudinous common 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 creed implied by the obsolete practice of ex- orcizing 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 modem 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 the ghost.
§ 164. Propitiation of the dead, which, originating funeral 346 THB DATA OF BOCIOLOaT.
rites^ develops into the obeervanees oonstitnting worship in general^ has thus, among its other divergent resolts, 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 ninmmy^ to the relics; there are sacrifices to a figure made partly of the relics and partly of other sub- stances; 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 com- bined^ the remains and the representative figure have been in kindred ways sacrificed to by civilized races — Egyptians, Etruscans, Romans, down even to medisBval Christians; for does not the adored figure of a saint above his tomb, undeni- ably correspond to the carved effigy which the savage places on a grave and propitiates P That this representative image of the dead man grows iilto the idol of the deity, we have clear proof. The wonship, persistent for various periods, becomes in some cases permanent; and then con- stitutes the established idolatry of the savage, which evolves finally into elaborate religious ceremonies performed before awe -inspiring statues in magnificent temples. Further, from the notion of the primitive man that along with likeness in aspect there goes fikeness 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 some- times a thiQg 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