ther
sentiments than fear prevail; natural affection is felt for the lost
relative; the ancestor represents the family, to which the individual
is called to subordinate and to some extent even to sacrifice
himself; the spirit of the dead is the upholder of a family tradition
which the living must hold sacred. Even in those cases in which
nothing but fear is apparent, these latter sentiments may also be to
some extent operative.

3. Fetish-worship.--The early world has still another kind of deity.
In the case of all those we have considered, the god stands in some
respect above the worshipper; man reverences the sun, spirit, or
animal, for some quality in them that is admirable or that gives them
a hold over him; they are in some ways beyond him. Among certain sets
of savages, however, notably in South Africa, this feature of
religion partially disappears, and objects are reverenced not for any
intrinsic quality in them that makes them worthy of regard, but
because of a spirit which is supposed to be connected with them.
Stones, trees, twigs, pieces of bark, roots, corn, claws of birds,
teeth, skin, feathers, articles of human manufacture, any conceivable
object, will be held in reverence by the savage and regarded as
embodying a spirit. Anything that strikes his fancy as being out of
the common he will take up and add to his museum of objects, each of
which has in it a hidden power. That power, be it repeated, is not
connected with the natural quality of the object, but is due to a
spirit which has come to reside in it, and which may very possibly
leave it again. Having chosen this deity and set it up for worship,
the man can use it as he thinks fit. He addresses prayers to it and
extols its virtues; but should his enterprise not prosper, he will
cast his deity aside as useless, and cease to worship it; he will
address it with torrents of abuse, and will even beat it, to make it
serve him better. It is a deity at his disposal, to serve in the
accomplishment of his desires; the individual keeps gods of his own
to help him in his undertakings.

The name "fetishism," by which this kind of worship is known, is of
Portuguese origin; it is derived from _feitico_, "made," "artificial"
(compare the old English _fetys_, used by Chaucer); and this term,
used of the charms and amulets worn in the Roman Catholic religion of
the period, was applied by the Portuguese sailors of the eighteenth
century to the deities they saw worshi