ier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to
whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a few
fetichistic notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs
in front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with
which he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says
the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play
with him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had
been drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very
pleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to
stand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way
of getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may
have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit
and eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or
expected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit,
however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the
dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1,
1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in the
dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add
another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine
that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living
essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed:
my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze
occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly
disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time
that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.
He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious
manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence
of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his
territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting
upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I
think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed
association between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of a
multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with his
greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.]

[Footnote 162: Note the