This last instance introduces us to another mode in which fetichistic conceptions arise. Already the practices of sorcerers have &miliarized us with the primitive belief that each person's nature inheres not only in all parts of his body, but in his dress and the things he has used. Probably the interpretation of odour has led to this belief. If the breath is the spirit or other-self, is not this invisible emanation which permeates a man's clothing, and by which he may be traced, also a part of his other-self? Various derivations show us this connexion of ideas. Perfume and fwms coming from a word applied to smoke or vapour, are thus brought into relation with the visible vapour of breaih. Exhalation is that which breathes out of. ] n Latin, nidor was applicable alike to a steam and a smell; and the German duft, used for a delicate odour, originally meant vapour. Just as we now speak of the " breath of flowers^'.as equivalent to their fragrance; so, in early speech, did men associate the smell with the expired air, which was identified with the soul. Have we not^ indeed, ourselves come to use the word spirit, similarly having reference to breath, for the odorous steam which distils from a thing; and may not the savage therefore naturally regard the spirit as having entered that to which the odour clings f However this may be, we find clear proof that not dress only, but even stones, are supposed to become permeated by this invisible emanation, existing either as breath or as odour. According to Ximenez, when a lord died in Vera Paz, " the first thing they did after his death was to put a precious stone in his mouth. Others say that they did this, not after his death, but in his last moments. The object of it was that the stone receive his soul." A kindred notion is implied by a practice of the Mexicans, who, along with a man's remains, ^^put a gem of more or less value, which they said would serve him in place of a heart in the other world ": heart and soul being, with some of these American peoples, convertible terms. Under another form the same idea meets us among the New Zealanders. Mr. White, who in Te Baou embodies many New Zealand superstitions, narrates a discussion concerning the ghosts of the dead, in which he represents an old man as saying — *' Are not all things the offering of the gods? Is not the komara the god that hid himself from fear? Do you not eat the kumara? Are not fish another god who went into the water? Do you not eat fish? Are not the birds also gods? Were not the gods spirits [t.^., ghosts of men]? Then, why are yon not afiraid of the things that you eat? Anything cooked sends the spirit into the stones on which they are cooked. Then, why do old people eat out of a hangi, and off tlie stones which hold the spirit of the food cooked on them? " Thus the original belief is that as a dead body, or a z mummy^ or an effigy^ may be entered by a spirit; bo^ too^ may a sliapeless stone. All the evidence goes to show that adoration of inanimate objects thns possessed by ghosts^ is really adoration of the indwelling ghosts; and that the powers ascribed to such objects are the powers ascribed to such ghosts.
§ 160. Naturally this notion^ once established, develops in all directions. A ready explanation of everything remarkable is furnished. When ghosts, accumulating and losing their once-remembered individualities, are thought of as a multitude of invisible beings — ^wheu they are here conceived as elbowed by the inhabitants of the house, here as swarming in the nooks of the forests, here as so numerous that a thing cannot be thrown aside without danger of hitting one; it happens, inevitably, that being everywhere at hand they become the assigned causes of all unfamiliar things. Instances are furnished by every race.
In Africa the Bulloms regard with awe, as implying spiritagency, '' whatever appears to them strange or uncommon.'' By the Congo people, unknown shells are called '^ Ood's children''; and the Negroes in Nuffi (on the Niger), astonished at the size of a European vessel, worshipped it. The like holds in Polynesia. Ellis tells us that a sledge left by Cook or his companions was worshipped by the natives. A cocoanut tree in Fiji, which divided in two branches, '* was consequently regarded with great veneration." Similarly in America. Schoolcraft says supematuralness is alleged of " anything which a Dakotah cannot comprehend"; and that by the Mandans all unusual things are deemed supernatural. (X the Chippewas Buchanan tells us that ^' if they do not understand anything, they immediately say, it is a spirit "; and the same notion was dominant among the ancient Peruvians, who, according to J. d'Acosta, "worshipped anything in nature which seemed to them notable and different from others, aa recognizing in it some particnlar deity/' Thas tlie unofloalnefifi which makes an object a fetich, is supposed to imply an indwelling ghost — an agent without which deviation from the ordinary would be onacconntable. There is no tendency gratuitously to ascribe duality of nature; but only when there is an unfamiliar appearance, or motion, or sound, or change, in a thing, does there arise this idea of a possessing spirit. Simon tells us of the Ghibchas that many worshipped '^ at lakes, rivulets, rocks, hills, and other places of striking or unusual aspect: saying that by certain occurrences '' the demon had given a sign that they should worship him at such places." The implication here so manifest, that one of the haunting invisible beings is the object of adoration, is again shown us by the Hindus. Mr. Lyall, in the essay lately quoted, though he accepts that current view of fetiehism which I think erroneous, so states the results of his Indian experiences that they perfectly harmonize with the interpretation here given. He says — " It is not difficult to pereeive how this original downright adoration 4)f queer-looking objects, is modified by passing into the higher order oi imaginatiye superstition. First, the stone is the abode of some spirit; its curious shape or situation betraying pouesiion. Next, this strange form or aspect argues some design, or handiwork, of supernatural beings," etc., etc.
So that indirect evidence from all sides converges to the conclusion that the fetich-worship is the worship of a special soul sapposed to have taken up its abode in the fetich; which sonl^ in common with supernatural agents at large, is originally the double of a dead man.
§ 161. But we need not rest with indirect evidence of this. Direct evidence is abundant.
Many pages back, facts were given showing that originally the fetich is nothing but the ghost. While, in § 58, we saw that the Abipones, fearing the ghost, thought "the echo was its voice "; we saw that the African, when asked 340 THE DATA OV SOCIOLOOT.
why lie made an offering to tlie echo, answered — ^^ Did you not hear the fetich f '^ In East Africa, Barton describes the fetich-huts as having food and beer placed in them ''to propitiate the ghosts/' The Coast Negroes who, worshipping the dead, perform ''pilgrimages to their graves to make oblations and sacrifices,^' who mould clay figures of their departed chiefs, who sometimes have tubes leading down to the buried corpses, through which they daily pour libations, show us by various associated observances that the fetich is the residence of the ghost. According to Winterbottom, the natives round Sierra Leone " seldom or never drink spirits, wine, etc., without spilling a little of it upon the ground, and wetting the grugru or fetich''; Cruikshank mentions certain foods abstained from according to the direction of the fetich; Beecham says the fetichhouse forms a sort of sanctuary; Bastian names a fetichman who used ventriloquism in announcing the oracles; — facts all implying notions like those which elsewhere go along with ghost-worship. Lander, speaking of a village on the Niger where there was a carved image, the fetich, says — "We were desired to roast our bullock under him, that he might enjoy the savoury smell "; and in Dahomey the roads, villages, and houses," according to Wilmot, are filled with fetich-images and sacrifices to the fetich."
Whether the fetich is a bundle of things belonging to a relative who has died, or an effigy of this deceased person, or an idol that has lost historic individuality, or some other object, the resident spirit is nothing but a modification of the ancestral ghost, deviating more or less according to circumstances. The certainty of this conclusion is best shown by the summarized statement Beecham makes.
**The fetiches are believed to be spiritual, intelligent beings, who make the remarkable objects of nature their residence, or enter occasionally into the images and other artificial representations, which have been duly cousecrated by certain ceremonies. It is the belief of the people that the fetiches not unfrequently render themselves visible to it mortalB. * * * They believe that these fetiches are of both sexes, and that they require food."
And if tliis occasional visibility^ this need for food^ and this difference of sex^ are not enough to show the original human nature of the fetich, it is conclusively shown by the following statement of Bastian about the Congo people.
" The natives say that the great fetich of Bamba lives in the bush, where no man sees him, or can see him. When he dies« the fetichpziests carefully collect his bones in order to revive them, and nourish' them till they again acquire flesh and blood."
So that the fetich, besides otherwise answering to the ghost, answers as being expected to resume, in like manner, the original bodily form.
§ 162. We will now draw a corollary from this interpretation of fetichism, and observe how coinpletely it harmonizes with the facts.
Evidence has been given that various low types of men have either no ideas of a revival after death, or vag^e and wavering ideas: the conception of a ghost is undeveloped. If, as contended above, the worship oE the fetich is the worship of an indwelling ghost, or a supernatural being derived from the ghost; it follows that the fetich-theory, being dependent on the ghost-theory, must succeed it in order of time. Absent where there is no ghost-theory, fetichism will arise after the ghost-theory has arisen. That it does this, proofs are abundant.
Of the Indian Hill-tribes may be named, as about the lowest known, the Judngs, who, with no word for a supernatural being, with no idea of another life, with no ancestor-worship, have also no fetichism: an accompanying absence of witchcraft being also noteworthy. The Andaman Islanders, classed with the most degraded of mankind, who are without a " notion of their own origin,'' and without a notion ''of a future existence,'' are also without fetichism: so, at least, may be concluded from the silence 342 THE DATA OF S0CI0L0Q7.
of those who describe them. Of the Fuegians, too^ among whom no appearances of religion were foond by Cook, no f etichism is alleged. Nor have those very inferior savages the Australians, though believing in ghosts, reached the stage at which the ghost-theory originates this derivative theory: they do not propitiate inanimate objects. Their nowextinct neighbours, too, the Tasmanians, like them in grade, were like them in this. And even the Veddahs, who, thinking the soids of their relatives are everywhere around, have a dominant ancestor-worship, but whose intelligence and social state are extremely low, do not show us this extension of the ghost-theory.
The implications of a doctrine do not occur to the uttiOrly stupid j but they become obvious to those who begin to think. Hence, in proportion as the reasoning &culty is good, will be the number of erroneous conclusions drawn from erroneous premises. As was pointed out in §§ 57 and 96, it is not savages devoid of intelligence, but highly intelligent savages, such as the Fijians, who believe that a man has two souls, his shadow and his reflection; and who accept the inference that, as objects have shadows, they too must have souls. The various African peoples, even taken by themselves, suffice to show that fetichism arises only when a certain stage of mental and social evolution has been reached. No fetichism is alleged of the Bushmen; and of the African races whose state is known to us, the Bushmen are the lowest. The Damaras, among whom, according to Andersson, intelligence is ''an unusual phenomenon,'' and whose stupidity Oalton exemplifies so vividly, have not drawn from their feebly-marked ghostbeliefs the inferences whence fetichism arises: Galton says •—''of the fetich superstition there is no trace.'' Bat fetichism meets us among the more advanced African races — the Congo people, the Inland Negroes, the Coast Negroes, the Dahomans, the Ashantees. We find it rampant where there are fortified towns, well-organized governments.
lai^ standing armies^ prisonfi^ police, and samptaary laws, oonsiderable division of labour, periodical markets, regpilar shops, and all the appliances showing some progress in ciyUization. Still more conspicuously is this relation exhibited in America. We do not read of fetichism among the rude Chirihuanas of ancient Peru; but among the civilissed Peruvians it was immensely elaborated. Both before and after the Ynca conquest, ''they worshipped herbs, plants, flowers, all kinds of trees, high hills, great rocks, and the chinks in them,* hollow caves, pebbles, and small stones of difEerent colours.'^ And then, if we ask where fetichism has culminated, we are referred to a people whose civilization, older in date than our own, has created vast cities, elaborate industries, a highly-structured language, great poems, subtle philosophies. In India, " A woman adores the basket which senres to bring or to hold her necessaries, and offers sacrifices to it; as well as to the rice-mill, and other implements that assist her in her household labours. A carpenter does the like homage to his hatchet, his adze, and other tools; and likewise offers saoiifioes to them. A Brahman does so to the style with which he is going to write; a soldier to the anns he is to use in the field; a mason to his troweL" And this statement of Dubois, quoted by Sir John Lubbock, coincides with that of Mr. Lyall in his '' Beligion of an Indian Province.'' "Not only," he says, ''does the husbandman pray to his plough, the fisher to his net, the weaver to his loom; but the scribe adores his pen, and the banker his account-books.''
How untenable is the idea that fetichism comes first among superstitions, will now be manifest. Suppose the facts reversed. Suppose that by Ju&ngs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tasmaniaos, and Bushmen, the worship of inanimaie objects was carried to the greatest extent; that among tribes a little advanced in intelligence and social state, it was somewhat restricted; that it went on decreasing as knowledge and civilization increased; and that in highly^developed societies, such as those of ancient Peru 344 THE DATA OF SpCIOLOGT* and modem India^ it became inconspicaons. Shotdd we not say that tlie statement was conclusively proved f Clearly, then^ as the facts happen to be exactly the opposite, the statement is conclusively disproved.
§ 163. Induction having shown the untruth of this current dogma, we are now prepared for seeing how entirely deduction discredits it.
Made on the strength of evidence furnished by early travellers, whose contact was chiefly with races partially advanced and even semi-civilized, the assertion that fetichism is primordial gained possession of men^s minds; and prepossession being nine points of belief, it has held its ground with scarcely a question. I had myself accepted it; though, as I remember, with some vague dissatisfaction, probably arising from inability to see how so strange an interpretation arose. This vague dissatisfaction passed into scepticism on becoming better acquainted with the ideas of savages. Tabulated evidence presented by the lowest races, changed scepticism into disbelief; and thought has made it manifest that the statement, disproved d paste" rioi-i, is contrary to a priori probability.
In the chapter on '^The Ideas of the Animate and Inanimate," it was shown that progressing intelligence gives increasing power to discriminate the living from the not-living; that the higher animals rarely confound the one with the other; and that to suppose the animal which is far above the rest in sagacity, gratuitously confuses the two, is unwarrantable. Were the fetichistic conception primordial, it would be possible to show how the evolution of thought necessitated its antecedence; whereas this, so far as I see, is impossible. Consider the mind of the savage as delineated in foregoing chapters — ^unspeculative, uncritical, incapable of generalizing, and with scarcely any notions save those yielded by the perceptions. Ask what could lead him to think of an inanimate object as having in it some existence besides that which his senses acquaint him with? He has no words for separate properties^ mach less a word for property in general; and if he cannot eren conceiye a property apart from an aggregate presenting i1>— cannot conceive coloar apart from particular objects coloured — ^how can he imagine a second invisible entity as causing the actions of the visible entity f He has neither that tendency to think which must precede such a conception^ nor has he the mental power required to grasp such a conception. Only as the progress of thought evolves the ghost-theory^ does there arise^ when circumstances suggest it, this idea of an animate agent in an inanimate object. I say advisedly — when circumstances suggest it; for at first he does not gratuitously assume spiritual possession. Something anomalous is requisite to suggest the presence of a spirit. And if afterwards, in higher stages of progress, he extends such interpretations, so as to think of multitudinous common things as possessed, the antecedent is an accumulation of ghosts and derived spirits swarming everywhere.
That fetichism is a sequence of the ghost-theory might, indeed, be suspected from the evidence which our own people have furnished, and still furnish. I do not specially refer to the still-extant doctrine of the real presence; nor to the creed implied by the obsolete practice of exorcizing the water used in baptism; nor to the conceptions of those who in past times thought objects which behaved strangely were ''possessed,'^ though they did not assume possession to account for the ordinary powers of objects. I refer chiefly to the evidence which modem spiritualists yield us. If tables turn and chairs move about without visible agency, spirits are the assumed agents. In presence of some action not understood, there is a revival of the fetichistic interpretation: the cause is a supernatural being, and this supernatural being is the ghost.
§ 164. Propitiation of the dead, which, originating funeral 346 THB DATA OF BOCIOLOaT.
rites^ develops into the obeervanees oonstitnting worship in general^ has thus, among its other divergent resolts, idol-worship and fetich-worship. All stages in the genesis of these are traceable.
There are sacrifices to the recently-dead body, to the dried body or ninmmy^ to the relics; there are sacrifices to a figure made partly of the relics and partly of other substances; there are sacrifices to a figure placed on a box containing the relics; there are sacrifices to a figure placed on the grave containing the remains. And as thus combined^ the remains and the representative figure have been in kindred ways sacrificed to by civilized races — Egyptians, Etruscans, Romans, down even to medisBval Christians; for does not the adored figure of a saint above his tomb, undeniably correspond to the carved effigy which the savage places on a grave and propitiates P That this representative image of the dead man grows iilto the idol of the deity, we have clear proof. The wonship, persistent for various periods, becomes in some cases permanent; and then constitutes the established idolatry of the savage, which evolves finally into elaborate religious ceremonies performed before awe -inspiring statues in magnificent temples. Further, from the notion of the primitive man that along with likeness in aspect there goes fikeness in nature, comes a belief that the effigy is inhabited by the ghost; and from this there descends the notion that deities enter idols and occasionally speak from them.
Between idol-worship and fetich-worship there is no break. In Africa the visible fetich is often a man-shaped figure, sometimes a figure less like a man, resembling ''nothing so much as one of our scare-crows ''; and sometimes a thiQg human only in its connexions, having the character of an amulet: the faith in which, as we saw (§ 133), grows from a faith in relics, and therefore arises from the ghost-theory. That the worship of things which are strange in size, shape, aspect, or behaviour, is derivatiYe^ and goes along with belief in the presence of a spirit originally homan^ fa.cts make clear. This extension^ becoming marked as we see it does where mental evolution has made considerable progress^ accompanies the growth and elaboration of the ghost-theory — occurs where ghosts are supposed to be ever-present causes of diseases^ cures, accidents, benefits, etc.; and exhibits the unchecked application of an hypothesis which seems to explain everything. Beliefs thus originating are aided by the idea that shadows are souls. As we before saw (§ 96), this idea into which primitive men are naturally betrayed, they extend to other shadows than those cast by their own bodies. As they advance, reason forces this implication on them; and acceptance of it strengthens those conceptions of object-souls otherwise reached. Proof that the thing worshipped in the remarkable object is a ghost, is in some cases joined with proof that it is an ancestral ghost. The hudcas of the Peruvians, which were both the objects themselves and the ghosts supposed to be in them and to speak from them, were their forefathers. Grarcilasso tells us that " an Indian is not looked upon as honourable unless he is descended from a fountain, river, or lake (or even the sea); or from a wild animal, such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call euntur [condor], or some other bird of prey; or from a mountain, cave, or forest ''; and, as Cieza shows us, these haacas whence they descended, they worshipped.
That idolatry and fetichism are aberrant developments of ancestor-worship, thus made, I think, abundantly evident, will become more evident still on passing to the kindred groups of facts which now follow.
CHAPTER XXIL ANIMAL-WORSHIP, § 165. Ik the chapter on "Primitive Ideas,'' it was pointed out that in the animal kingdom the metamorphoses which actually occur, are^ at first sight, more marrellona than many which are wrongly supposed to occur — that the contrasts between a maggot and a fly, an egg and a bird, a tadpole and a frog, are greater than the contrasts between a child and a pnppy^ a man and a bull.
Encouraged, then, by the changes he daily sees, and not deterred by such cognitions as have been established by experiences accumulating for thousands of years, the savage yields unresistingly to anything which suggests that a creature has assumed a different shape. In some cases the supposed change is from one of the lower animals into another; as in Brazil, where. Burton says, " the people universally believe that the humming-bird is transmutable into the humming-bird hawk-moth.'' But mostly, the transformation is of men into animals, or of animals into men.
In glancing at the evidence supplied by all races, we will first take a number of examples, and then consider the interpretations.
§ 166. The belief that human beings disguise themselves as brutes, is in some cases specified generally; as concerning the Thlinkeets of North America, who " will kill a bear AKDCAL-WOBSHIP. 849 only in case of great necessity, for the bear is sapposed to be a man that has taken the shape of an animal.'' And the converse idea is carrent in its general form among the Karens, who think '^ the waters are inhabited by beings whose proper form is that of dragons [? crocodiles], bat that occasionally appear as men, and who take wives of the children of men." Usually, however, only certain classes of men and women, distingaished by power of some kind, or believed to be so, have this ability ascribed to them.
Regarding all special skill as supernatural, sundry African peoples think the blacksmith (who ranks next to the medicine-man) works by spirit-agency; and in Abyssinia '^blacksmiths are supposed able to turn themselves into hyaenas and other animals." So strong is this belief that it infects even European residents: Wilkinson instances a traveller who asserted that he had seen the metamorphosis. More commonly it is the sorcerers exclusively of whom this power is alleged. Campbell tells us that the Khonds believe '' witches have the faculty of transforming themselves into tigers." According to Winterbottom, in case of ''an alligator seizing upon a child whilst bathing in the river, or a leopard carrying off a goat," the BuUoms " are of opinion that it is not a real leopard or alligator which has committed the depredation, but a witch under one of these assumed forms." Mendieta says that among the Mexicans "there were sorcerers and witches who were thought to transform themselves into animals." Describing the people of Honduras, Herrera tells us they "punished sorcerers that did mischief; and some of them are said to have ranged on the mountains like tigers or lions, killing men, till they were taken and hanged." Both from Piedrahita and P. Simon, we learn that the Chibchas "pretended to have gfreat sorcerers who might be transformed into lions, bears, and tigers, and devour men like these animals." To chiefs as well as to sorcerers this faculty is in some places ascribed. Of the Tunja Thomagata, one of the Chibcha ralers, Piedraliita says he Was belieyed '' ta have had a long tail^ after the manner of a lion or a tiger^ which he dragged on the soil/' Africans supply kindred illustrations. Here is one; to which^ however^ I have unfortunately lost the reference.
" There are also a great many lions and hysnas, and there is no oheok upon the increase of the former, for the people, beUeving that the Bonis of their chiefs enter into them, never attempt to kill them; they even believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and then retnrn to the hnman form; therefore, when they see one they commence clapping their hands, which is the nsnal mode of salntation."
In some cases this supposed power extends to the chiefs relatives. Schweinfurth narrates how^ when at Gallabat^ having shot a hyssna^ he was reproached by the sheik because his, the sheik's, mother, was a '' hyaena-woman.*' Instead of a change of form there is, in other cases, possession. We saw how the primitive dream- theory, with its wandering double which deserts the body and reenters it, brings, among many sequences, the belief that wandering doubles can enter other bodies than their own; and the last chapter exhibited some wide extensions of this doctrine: representative figures, and even inanimate objects not having human shapes, being supposed permeable by human ghosts. Naturally, then, animals are included among the things men's souls go into. Livingstone tells us that at Tete, the people believe '^that while persons are still living they may enter into lions and alligators, and then return again to their own bodies." Brett says the Guiana tribes think jaguars '^ are possessed by the spirits of men."
Of course, along with beliefs in possession by the doubles of living persons, there go beliefs in possession by the doubles of dead persons. Marsden says the Sumatrans imagine that ** tigers in general are actuated with the spirits of departed men, and no AimCAL-WOBSHIP. 351 eonsidBnilioii wilL prevail on a eonntiTman to eatch or to woimd one, but in self-defence, or immediately after the act of destroying a friend."
Among existing American races the Apaches^ according to Bancroft^ '^liold that every rattlesnake contains the soul of a bad man or is an emissary of the Eril Spirit "; and the same writer gives testimony that '' the Calif omians round San Diego will not eat the flesh of large game^ believing such animals are inhabited by the souls of generations of people that have died ages ago: 'eater of venison I ' is a term of reproach among them.*' With the ancient American races it was the same. As one out of many statements^ may be given this made by Olavigero: — " The people of Tlascala believed that the sonls of persons of rank went, after their death, to inhabit the bodies of beautiful and sweet singing birds, and those of the nobler quadrupeds; while the souls of inferior persons were supposed to pass into weazles, beetles," etc.
There are like beliefs among Africans. When Hutchinson doubted the assertion that men's souls pass into monkeys and crocodiles^ he was answered — " It be Calabar f ash^ and white man no saby anyting about it.''