sure, so that
its special efficacy persists, and it continues to be the object of
hopes and fears either in the past or in the future. In a word, the
natural myth of animals is transformed by man into a fetish, whether
this object or its corresponding image in his mind be superstitiously
regarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible.

This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishism
among all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and conscious
life to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears,
the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhorrence for some given species
of stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual natural
object. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of
talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms,
had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of the
fetish, the internal duplication of the external animation and
personification of objects.

It is evident that fetishism in its earliest and most primitive form was
always inspired by special objects, since the external perception of
animals and of man is special and concrete. But we have seen how our
intelligence, by a spontaneous and innate process, was led to form types
from the immense variety of special things and phenomena, and these
types are the specific forms of such things as are alike, analogous, or
identical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of the psychical
faculty, which is not inconsistent with the fundamental process of
animal intelligence, man animates and personifies these specific types,
just as he had animated the special perceptions whence they were
generated in his mind.[19]

The second form of myth next occurs, if considered as it exists in man,
but the third form of myth, if regarded in his solidarity with the
animal kingdom. Instead of investing the special fetish of a given
object with superstitious fear, he now adores or fears all objects of
the same species, or which, in the imperfect classification of primitive
times, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a common
example, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the first
form of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and of
the snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He next
supposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a single
power, manifesting itself in this shape