Fetishism Defined.
Fetishism is “the straightforward, objective admiration of visible substances fancied to possess some mysterious influence or faculty.... The original downright adoration of queer-looking objects is modified by passing into the higher order of imaginative superstition. First, the stone is the abode of some spirit, its curious shape or position betraying possession. Next, the strange form or aspect argues some design or handiwork of supernatural beings, or is the vestige of their presence upon earth, and one step further leads us to the regions of mythology and heroic legend.”40 The unusual appearance of the object is thus supposed to imply an indwelling ghost, without which deviation from the ordinary type would be inexplicable. Hence fetishism depends on animism and the ghost theory, to which in order of time it must have succeeded.