t is not a fetich that he rejects it as a useless tool. But what
Bosman's negro suggests, and apparently intended to suggest, is that
the fetich worshipper makes, say, a stone his god, knowing that it is a
stone and nothing more; and that he breaks his fetich believing it to
be a god. {114} Thus the worshipper knows that the object is no god
when he is worshipping it; but believes it to be a god when he rejects
it as a useless tool. Now that is, consciously or unconsciously,
deliberately or not, a misrepresentation of fetichism; and it is
precisely on that misconception of what fetichism is that they base
themselves who identify religion with fetichism, and then argue that,
as fetichism has no value, religious or reasonable, neither has
religion itself.

Returning now to the question what fetichism is--a question which must
be answered before we can enquire what religious value it possesses,
and whether it can be of any use for the practical purposes of the
missionary in his work--we have now seen that a fetich is not merely an
"inanimate," but something more; and that an object to become regarded
as a fetich must attract the attention of the man who is to adopt it,
and must attract the attention of the man when he has business on hand,
that is to say when he has some end in view which he desires to attain,
or generally when he is in a state of expectancy. The process of
choice is one of "natural selection." Professor Hoeffding sees in it
"the simplest conceivable construction of religious ideas. The choice
is entirely elementary {115} and involuntary, as elementary and
involuntary as the exclamation which is the simplest form of a judgment
of worth. The object chosen must be something or other which is
closely bound up with whatever engrosses the mind. It perhaps awakens
memories of earlier events in which it was present or cooperative, or
else it presents a certain--perhaps a very distant--similarity to
objects which helped in previous times of need. Or it may be merely
the first object which presents itself in a moment of strained
expectation. It attracts attention, and is therefore involuntarily
associated with what is about to happen, with the possibility of
attaining the desired end" (_Philosophy of Religion_, E. T., p. 139).
And then Professor Hoeffding goes on to say, "In such phenomena as these
we encounter religion under the guise of desire." Now, without denying
that there are such things as religi