with
fetiches. A fetich is an inanimate or lifeless object, even if it is
the feather, claw, bone, eyeball, or any other part of an animal or
even of a man. It is as {112} Bosman's negro said, "any inanimate that
falls in our way." When he goes on to say that it "is immediately
presented with an offering," and, so long as its owner believes in it,
"is daily presented with a fresh offering," he is stating a fact that
is beyond dispute, and which is fully recognised by all students. A
typical instance is given by Professor Tylor (_Primitive Culture_, II,
158) of the owner of a stone which had been taken as a fetich: "He was
once going out on important business, but crossing the threshold he
trod on this stone and hurt himself. Ha! ha! thought he, art thou
there? So he took the stone, and it helped him through his undertaking
for days." When Bosman's negro further goes on to state that if the
fetich is discovered by its owner not to prosper his undertakings, as
he expected it to do, "it is rejected as a useless tool," he makes a
statement which is admitted to be true and which, in its truth, may be
understood to mean that when the owner finds that the object is not a
fetich, he casts it aside as being nothing but the "inanimate" which it
is. Bosman's negro, however, says not that the inanimate but that "the
new god is rejected as a useless tool." That we must take as being but
a carelessness of expression; the evidence of Colonel {113} Ellis, an
observer whose competence is undoubted, is: "Every native with whom I
have conversed on the subject has laughed at the possibility of it
being supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice to some such
object as a stone, which of itself would be perfectly obvious to his
senses was a stone only and nothing more" (_The Tshi-speaking Peoples_,
p. 192). From these words it follows that the object worshipped as a
fetich is a stone (or whatever it is) and something more, and that the
object "rejected as a useless tool" is a stone (or whatever it is) and
nothing more. When, then, Bosman's negro goes on to say, "we make and
break our gods daily," he is not describing accurately the processes as
they are conceived by those who perform them. The fetich worshipper
believes that the object which arrests his attention has already the
powers which he ascribes to it; and it is in consequence of that belief
that he takes it as his fetich. And it is only when he is convinced
that i