great currency from Comte's use of it to denote a general theory of primitive religion. Professor Tylor, most unfortunately for us who are interested in West African religion, confines the use of the word to one department of his theory of animism only—namely to the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influence through certain material objects.[1]
I do not in the least deny Professor Tylor's right to use the word Fetish[2] in that restricted sense in his general study of comparative religion. I merely wish to mention that you cannot use it in this restricted sense, but want the whole of his grand theory of animism wherewith to describe the religion of the West Africans. For although there is in that religion a heavy percentage of embodied spirits, there is also a heavier percentage of unembodied spirits—spirits that have no embodiment in matter and spirits that only occasionally embody themselves in matter.
Take, for example, the gods of the Ewe and Tshi.[3] There is amongst them Tando, the native high god of Ashantee. He appears to his priesthood as a giant, tawny skinned, lank haired, and wearing the Ashantee robe. But when
- ↑ Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, p. 144.
- ↑ Professor Tylor kindly allowed me to place this statement before him, and he says that as the word Fetish, with the sense of the use of bones, claws, stones, and such objects as receptacles of spiritual influences, has had nearly two centuries of established usage, it would not be easy to set it aside, and he advises me to use the term West African religion, or in some way make my meaning clear without expecting to upset the established nomenclature of comparative ethnology.
- ↑ This word is pronounced by the natives and by people knowing them, Cheuwe, as Ellis undoubtedly knew, but presumably he spelt it Tshi to please the authorities.
