Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.




"Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always
necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies
instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the
feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential
transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards
undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose
to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in
a religious state the most remote from the original point of
departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has
presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the
established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of
the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the
inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the
higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable
polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably
raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all
times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit
traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in
reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world
amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn
between the earth and an immense living animal, and other
similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of
philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this
cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in
Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized
fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the
vulgar."--Vol. V. p. 38.

He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to
the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the
labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The
mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to
transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we
feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our
own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute
unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with
quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition
of the rude intellect.

"All observable bodies," he says "being thus immediately
personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of
the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself
spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
never again has been produced, and which must have excited in
him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back
with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity."

Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and
censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of
man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The
principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many
respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application;
but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the
origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst
rude thinkers--we do not find any condition of mankind which displays
that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author
would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly
a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of
fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this
animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with
a desire to explain _their_ phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied
relation between those objects and the human being. The _charm_ or the
_amulet_--some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases,
or bring good-luck--grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading
the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of
granting his prayer.[50]

[50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism
in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand,
and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only
who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it
quoted on a grave occasion:--

"The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is
known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for
witchcraft, _feitico_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or
_Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every
village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a
rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree,
is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the
largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one,
take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless--a
stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the
worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The
ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his
family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling
them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and
with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on
that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this
superstition, but believed in it, and practised it
themselves."--Vol. V. p. 136.

We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating
the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author's generalizations
when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the
development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to
extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such
scientific precision, fixed it.

"Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the
religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the
most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at
present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent
and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a
less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the
more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has
naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance--an importance
extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I
shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism
supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being
truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an
inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary
will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to
comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious
_regime_ to the other."--P. 97.

The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of
generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects,
and classified them into one species, so they approximated the
corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal
Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from
matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became
a god.

"For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a
character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their
indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a
special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less
extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only,
from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary
to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a
chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a
god--that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist,
properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this
would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily
endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the
similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks,
led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what
was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no
longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the
forest."--P. 101.

This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is
utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate
a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any
natural event is _invisible_, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism;
it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be
theologically explained--and there is no event in nature more likely to
suggest such explanation--the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it
must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose
mind had not been solely and purely _scientific_, would have created for
itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]

[51] At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is
taken, the _Doctor_ tells a story which, if faith could be put
in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and
such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,)
might deserve a place in the history of superstition.

"One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a
reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a
boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful
schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear
produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used
every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."

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