ous desires--and holding as we do
that religion is the search after God and the yearning of the human
heart after Him, "the desire of all nations," we shall have no
temptation to deny that there are such things as religious desires--yet
we must for the moment reserve our decision on the question whether it
is in such phenomena {116} as these that we encounter religious
desires, and we must bear in mind that there are desires which are not
religious, and that we want to know whether it is in the phenomena of
fetichism that we encounter religious desires.

That in the phenomena of fetichism we encounter desires other than
religious is beyond dispute: the use of a fetich is, as Dr. Nassau
says, "to aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific
wish" (_Fetichism in West Africa_, p. 82); that is, of any specific
wish. Now, a fetich is, as we have seen, an inanimate object and
something more. What more? In actual truth, nothing more than the
fact that it is "involuntarily associated with what is about to happen,
with the possibility of attaining the desired end." But to the
possessor the something more, it may be said, is the fact that it is
not merely an "inanimate" but also a spirit, or the habitation of a
spiritual being. When, however, we reflect that fetichism goes back to
the animistic stage of human thought, in which all the things that we
term inanimate are believed to be animated by spirits, it is obvious
that we require some differentia to mark off those things (animated by
spirits) which are fetiches from those things (animated by spirits)
{117} which are not. And the differentia is, of course, that fetiches
are spirits, or objects animated by spirits, which will aid the
possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish, and are thought
to be willing so to aid, owing to the fact that by an involuntary
association of ideas they become connected in the worshipper's mind
with the possibility of attaining the end he has in view at the moment.
To recognise fetichism, then, in its simplest if not in its most
primitive form, all we need postulate is animism--the belief that all
things are animated by spirits--and the process of very natural
selection which has already been described. At this stage in the
history of fetichism it is especially difficult to judge whether the
fetich is the spirit or the object animated by the spirit. As Dr.
Haddon says (p. 83), "Just as the human body and soul form one