ossible to maintain that a god is evolved out of a fetich as it
would be to argue--indeed it is arguing--that practices destructive of
society or social welfare have only to be pushed far enough and they
will prove the salvation of society.

If in the animistic stage, when everything that is is worked by
spirits, it is possible and desirable for the individual to gain his
individual ends by the cooperation of some spirit, it is equally
possible and more desirable for the community to gain the aid of a
spirit which will further the ends for the sake of which the community
exists. But those ends are not transient or momentary, neither
therefore can the spirit who promotes them be a "momentary" god. And
if we accept Hoeffding's description of the simplest and earliest
manifestation of the religious spirit as being belief "in a power which
cares whether he [man] has or has not experiences which he values," we
must be careful to make it clear that the {136} power worshipped by a
community is worshipped because he is believed to care that the
community should have the experiences which the community values.
Having made that stipulation, we may accept Hoeffding's further
statement (p. 147) that "even the momentary and special gods implied
the existence of a personifying tendency and faculty"; for, although
from our point of view a momentary god is a self-contradictory notion,
we are quite willing to agree that this tendency to personification may
be taken as primary and primitive: religion from the beginning has been
the search after a power essentially personal. But that way of
conceiving spiritual powers is not in itself distinctive of or confined
to religion: it is an intellectual conception; it is the essence of
animism, and animism is not religion. To say that an emotional element
also must be present is true; but neither will that serve to mark off
fetichism from religion. Fetichism also is emotional in tone: it is in
hope that the savage picks up the thing that may prove to have the
fetich power; and it is with fear that he recognises his neighbour's
_suhman_. A god is not merely a power conceived of intellectually and
felt emotionally to be a personal power from whom things may {137} be
hoped or feared; he must indeed be a personal power and be regarded
with hope and fear, but it is by a community that he must be so
regarded. And the community, in turning to such a power, worships him
with sacrifice: a god is in