CHAPTER VII
THE FETICH—A WORSHIP
Worship is an eminent part of every form of religion, but it is not essential to it. True, most religions have some form of worship. But a belief would still be a religion, even if it were so insignificant or so degraded or so indifferent as not to care to express itself in rites or ceremonies.
Fetichism, whose claim to a right to be reckoned as a religion some have been disposed to dispute, expresses itself by most of the visible and audible means used in the cults of other forms of religion.
The motives also that prompt to the performance of religious rites are not to enter into the question whether the beliefs associated with them are worthy to be dignified by the name “religion.” Motives may vary widely, e. g., love in an evangelical Christian, pride in a Pharisee, sensual lust in a follower of Islam and in a Mormon, and fear in the fetich worshipper. Those motives, mixed perhaps with other considerations, are the dominant factor in the government of the religious life of each.
We have already seen in the previous chapter that the religious thought of the believer in fetichism does not concern his soul or its future. The evils he would escape are not moral or spiritual. The sense of a great need that makes him look for help outside of himself is not based on a desire to obey God’s will, but on his and some spirit’s co-relation to the great needs of this mortal life.
The salvation sought being a purely physical one, the thoughts that direct the use of means to that end are limited to physical needs, and largely to physical agencies. But not entirely: for one of these agencies, as already mentioned in the previous chapter, is prayer; other agencies are sacrificial offerings, and the use of amulet charms, or talismans, known as fetiches.
1. Fetich Worship as performed by Sacrifice and other Offerings. Sacrifice is an element in all real worship, if by sacrifice, in the widest sense, may be understood the devoting of any object from a common to a sacred use, and this irrespective of the actual value of the gift (as is the case also with Chinese paper imitation money scattered around the grave, in Chinese funerals). The intention of the giver ennobles it; the spirit being supposed in some vague way to be gratified by the respectful recognition of itself, and even to be pleased sometimes by the gift itself.