ng traditionally
as incidents in the life of a prophet, e.g. the rain-making of Elijah.
In the same way therefore as I have suggested that the resemblances
between gods and fetishes are to be explained by the theory that the
two go back to a common source, and that neither is developed from the
other, so I suggest that the resemblances between the conception of
prophet and that of magician point not to the priority of either to
the other, but to the derivation or evolution of both from a prior and
less determinate concept.

Just as a fetish is a material thing, and something more, so a
magician is a man and something more. Just as a god is an idol and
something more, so a prophet or priest is a man and something more.
The fetish is a material thing which manifests a power that other
things do not exhibit; and the magician is a man possessing a power
which other men have not. The difference between the magician and the
prophet or priest is the same as the difference between the fetish and
the god. It is the difference between that which subserves the wishes
of the individual, which may be, and often are, anti-social, and that
which furthers the interests of the community. Of this difference each
child who is born into the community learns from his elders: it is
part of the common consciousness of the community. And it could not
become a fact of the common consciousness until the existence of self
became recognised in thought and expressed in language. With that
recognition of difference, or possible difference, between the
individual and the community, between the desires of the one and the
welfare of the other, came the recognition of a difference between
fetish and god, between magician and priest. The power exercised by
either was greater than that of man; but the power manifested in the
one was exercised with a view to the good of the community; in the
case of the other, not. Thus, from the beginning, gods were not merely
beings exercising power greater than that of man, but beings
exercising their power for the good of man. It is as such that, from
the beginning to the end, they have figured both in the common
consciousness of the community, and in the consciousness of every
member born into the community. They have figured in both; and,
because they have figured both in the individual consciousness and the
common consciousness, they have, from the beginning, been something
present to both, something at once within