." Now, not all desires are religious; and the question, which
is purely a question of fact, arises whether the desires which
fetichism subserves are religious. And in using the word "religious" I
will not here place any extravagant meaning on the word; I will take it
in the meaning which would be understood by the community in which the
owner of a fetich dwells himself. In the tribes described by Colonel
Ellis, for instance, there are worshipped personal gods having proper
names; and the worship is served by duly appointed priests; and the
worshippers consist of a body of {122} persons whose welfare the god
has at heart. Such are some of the salient features of what all
students of the science of religion would include under the head of the
religion of those tribes. Now amongst those same tribes the fetich, or
_suhman_, as it is termed by them, is found; and there are several
features which make a fetich quite distinguishable from any of the gods
which are worshipped there. Thus, the fetich has no body of
worshippers: it is the private property, of its owner, who alone makes
offerings to it. Its _raison d'etre_, its special and only function,
is to subserve the private wishes of its owner. In so far as he makes
offerings to it he may be called its priest; but he is not, as in the
case of the priests of the gods who are worshipped there, the
representative of the community or congregation, for a fetich has no
plurality of worshippers; and none of the priests of the gods will have
anything to do with it. Next, "though offerings are made to the
_suhman_ by its owner, they are made in private" (Jevons, _History of
Religion_, p. 165)--there is no public worship--and "public opinion
does not approve of them." The interests and the desires which the
fetich exists to promote are not those of the community: they are
antisocial, for, as Colonel Ellis {123} tells us, "one of the special
attributes of a _suhman_ is to procure the death of any person whom its
worshipper may wish to have removed"--indeed "the most important
function of the _suhman_ appears to be to work evil against those who
have injured or offended its worshipper."

Thus, a very clear distinction exists between the worship of a fetich
and the worship of the gods. It is not merely that the fetich is
invoked occasionally in aid of antisocial desires: nothing can prevent
the worshipper of a god, if the worshipper be bad enough, from praying
for that which