De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which
he neglected among savages (i. 196). Tant pis pour monsieur le
President. But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses
and his, than Mr. Max Muller's etymologies stand or fall with those in
the Cratylus of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we
find a practice vaguely styled 'fetishistic,' we examine it in its
details. While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers' fetiches, I do not
think that, except among some children, we have anything nearly analogous
to Gold Coast fetishism as a whole. Some one seems to have called the
palladium a fetish. I don't exactly know what the palladium (called a
fetish by somebody) was. The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish--an
apparent abuse of language. As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss
such free-thinking credulities?

Modern anthropologists--Tylor, Frazer, and the rest--are not under the
censure appropriate to the illogical.

More Mischiefs of Comparison

The 'Nemesis' (i. 196) of De Brosses' errors did not stay in her ravaging
progress. Fetishism was represented as 'the very beginning of religion,'
first among the negroes, then among all races. As I, for one,
persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable
mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my
piety. I said, long ago, 'the train of ideas which leads man to believe
in and to treasure fetishes is _one among the earliest springs_ of
religious belief.' {120a} But from even this rather guarded statement I
withdraw. 'No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the
beginning.' {120b}

Still more Nemesis

The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me--namely,
that 'modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of
religion.' They _probably_ represent an _early_ stage in religion, just
as, teste. Mr. Max Muller, they represent an early stage in language 'In
savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the
most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language,
with all its childish pranks.' {120c}

Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the 'childhood'
and 'childish pranks' of language, why should the beliefs of modern
savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion? I
am not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max