De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which he neglected among savages (i. 196).  Tant pis pour monsieur le President.  But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Muller’s etymologies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato.  If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ‘fetishistic,’ we examine it in its details.  While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers’ fetiches, I do not think that, except among some children, we have anything nearly analogous to Gold Coast fetishism as a whole.  Some one seems to have called the palladium a fetish.  I don’t exactly know what the palladium (called a fetish by somebody) was.  The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish—­an apparent abuse of language.  As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss such free-thinking credulities?

Modern anthropologists—­Tylor, Frazer, and the rest—­are not under the censure appropriate to the illogical.

More Mischiefs of Comparison

The ‘Nemesis’ (i. 196) of De Brosses’ errors did not stay in her ravaging progress.  Fetishism was represented as ‘the very beginning of religion,’ first among the negroes, then among all races.  As I, for one, persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my piety.  I said, long ago, ’the train of ideas which leads man to believe in and to treasure fetishes is one among the earliest springs of religious belief.’ {120a} But from even this rather guarded statement I withdraw.  ’No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the beginning.’ {120b}

Still more Nemesis

The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me—­namely, that ’modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.’  They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste.  Mr. Max Muller, they represent an early stage in language ’In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew.  We watch the childhood of language, with all its childish pranks.’ {120c}

Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the ‘childhood’ and ‘childish pranks’ of language, why should the beliefs of modern savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion?  I am not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max Muller is right in his remark on language.  The Australian blacks have been men as long as the Prussian nobility.  Their language has had time to outgrow ‘childish pranks,’ but apparently it has not made use of its opportunities, according to our critic.  Does he know why?

One need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are meant, regard modern savages ‘as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,’ or from monkeys (i. 197).  ’Savages have a far-stretching unknown history behind them.’  ‘The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.’ {121} So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me—­and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists.