Part 16 (1/2)
[Footnote 29: Eusebius, _Prap. Evang_. v. 9.]
[Footnote 30: Brough Smyth, i. 100, 113.]
[Footnote 31: Kirk, _Secret Commonwealth_ 1691.]
[Footnote 32: Crantz, p. 209.]
[Footnote 33: Pere Arnaud, in Hind's _Labrador_, ii. 102.]
[Footnote 34: Major Swan, 1791, official letter on the Creek Indians, Schoolcraft, v. 270.]
[Footnote 35: Crantz, p. 237.]
[Footnote 36: _Polynesian Researches_, i. 519.]
[Footnote 37: 1 Kings xviii. 42.]
[Footnote 38: Carver, pp. 123, 184.]
VIII
FETIs.h.i.+SM AND SPIRITUALISM
It has been shown how the doctrine of souls was developed according to the anthropological theory. The hypothesis as to how souls of the dead were later elevated to the rank of G.o.ds, or supplied models after which such G.o.ds might be inventively fas.h.i.+oned, will be criticised in a later chapter. Here it must suffice to say that the conception of a separable surviving soul of a dead man was not only not essential to the savage's idea of his supreme G.o.d, as it seems to me, but would have been wholly inconsistent with that conception. There exist, however, numerous forms of savage religion in addition to the creed in a Supreme Being, and these contribute their streams to the ocean of faith. Thus among the kinds of belief which served in the development of Polytheism, was Fetis.h.i.+sm, itself an adaptation and extension of the idea of separable souls. In this regard, like ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, it differs from the belief in a Supreme Being, which, as we shall try to demonstrate, is not derived from the theory of ghosts or souls at all.
_Fetish_ (_fetiche_) seems to come from Portuguese _feitico_, a talisman or amulet, applied by the Portuguese to various material objects regarded by the negroes of the west coast with more or less of religious reverence. These objects may be held sacred in some degree for a number of incongruous reasons. They may be tokens, or may be of value in sympathetic magic, or merely _odd_, and therefore probably endowed with unknown mystic qualities. Or they may have been pointed out in a dream, or met in a lucky hour and a.s.sociated with good fortune, or they may (like a tree with an unexplained stir in its branches, as reported by Kohl) have seemed to show signs of life by spontaneous movements; in fact, a thing may be what Europeans call a fetish for scores of reasons. For our present purpose, as Mr. Tylor says, 'to cla.s.s an object as a fetish demands explicit statement that a spirit is considered as embodied in it, or acting through it, or communicating by it, or, at least, that the people it belongs to do habitually think this of such objects; or it must be shown that the object is treated as having personal consciousness or power, is talked with, wors.h.i.+pped...' and so forth. The in-dwelling spirit may be human, as when a fetish is made out of a friend's skull, the spirit in which may even be asked for oracles, like the Head of Bran in Welsh legend.
We have tried to show that the belief in human souls may be, in part at least, based on supernormal phenomena which Materialism disregards. We shall now endeavour to make it probable that Fetis.h.i.+sm (the belief in the souls tenanting inanimate objects) may also have sources which perhaps are not normal, or which at all events seemed supernormal to savages. We say 'perhaps not normal' because the phenomena now to be discussed are of the most puzzling character. We may lean to the belief in a supernormal cause of certain hallucinations, but the alleged movements of inanimate objects which probably supply one origin of Fetis.h.i.+sm, one suggestion of the presence of a spirit in things dead, leave the inquiring mind in perplexity. In following Mr. Tylor's discussion of the subject, it is necessary to combine what he says about Spiritualism in his fourth with what he says about Fetis.h.i.+sm in his fourteenth and later chapters. For some reason his book is so arranged that he criticises 'Spiritualism'
long before he puts forward his doctrine of the origin and development of the belief in spirits.
We have seen a savage reason for supposing that human spirits inhabit certain lifeless things, such as skulls and other relics of the dead. But how did it come to be thought that a spirit dwelt in a lifeless and motionless piece of stone or stick? Mr. Tylor, perhaps, leads us to a plausible conjecture by writing: 'Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll: this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively, like a table or a hat at a modern spirit seance.'[1] Now M. Lefebure has pointed out (in 'Melusine') that, according to De Brosses, the African conjurers gave an appearance of independent motion to small objects, which were then accepted as fetishes, being visibly animated. M. Lefebure next compares, like Mr. Tylor, the alleged physical phenomena of spiritualism, the flights and movements of inanimate objects apparently untouched.
The question thus arises, Is there any truth whatever in these world-wide and world-old stories of inanimate objects acting like animated things?
Has fetis.h.i.+sm one of its origins in the actual field of supernormal experience in the X region? This question we do not propose to answer, as the evidence, though practically universal, may be said to rest on imposture and illusion. But we can, at least, give a sketch of the nature of the evidence, beginning with that as to the apparently _voluntary_ movements of objects, _not_ untouched. Mr. Tylor quotes from John Bell's 'Journey in Asia' (1719) an account of a Mongol Lama who wished to discover certain stolen pieces of damask. His method was to sit on a bench, when 'he carried it, or, as was commonly believed, it carried him, to the very tent' of the thief. Here the bench is innocently believed to be self-moving. Again, Mr. Rowley tells how in Manganjah the sorcerer, to find out a criminal, placed, with magical ceremonies, two staffs of wood in the hands of some young men. 'The sticks whirled and dragged the men round like mad,' and finally escaped and rolled to the feet of the wife of a chief, who was then denounced as the guilty person.[2]
Mr. Duff Macdonald describes the same practice among the Yaos:[3]
'The sorcerer occasionally makes men take hold of a stick, which, after a time, begins to move as if endowed with life, and ultimately carries them off bodily and with great speed to the house of the thief.'
The process is just that of Jacques Aymard in the celebrated story of the detection of the Lyons murderer.[4]
In Melanesia, far enough away, Dr. Codrington found a similar practice, and here the sticks are explicitly said by the natives to be moved by _spirits_.[5] The wizard and a friend hold a bamboo stick by each end, and ask what man's ghost is afflicting a patient. At the mention of the right ghost 'the stick becomes violently agitated.' In the same way, the bamboo 'would run about' with a man holding it only on the palms of his hands. Again, a hut is built with a part.i.tion down the middle. Men sit there with their hands _under_ one end of the bamboo, while the other end is extended into the empty half of the hut. They then call over the names of the recently dead, till 'they feel the bamboo moving in their hands.' A bamboo placed on a sacred tree, 'when the name of a ghost is called, moves of itself, and will lift and drag people about.' Put up into a tree, it would lift them from the ground. In other cases the holding of the sticks produces convulsions and trance.[6] The divining sticks of the Maori are also 'guided by spirits,'[7] and those of the Zulu sorcerers rise, fall, and jump about.[8]
These Zulu performances must be really very curious. In the last chapter we told how a Zulu named John, having a s.h.i.+lling to lay out in the interests of psychical research, declined to pay a perplexed diviner, and reserved his capital far a more meritorious performance. He tried a medium named Unomants.h.i.+nts.h.i.+, who divined by Umabakula, or dancing sticks--
'If they say ”no,” they fall suddenly; if they say ”yes,” they arise and jump about very much, and leap on the person who has come to inquire. They ”fix themselves on the place where the sick man is affected; ... if the head, they leap on his head.... Many believe in Umabakula more than in the diviner. But there are not many who have the Umabakula.”'
Dr. Callaway's informant only knew two Umabakulists, John was quite satisfied, paid his s.h.i.+lling, and went home.[9]
The sticks are about a foot long. It is not reported that they are moved by spirits, nor do they seem to be regarded as fetishes.
Mr. Tylor also cites a form of the familiar pendulum experiment. Among the Karens a ring is suspended by a thread over a metal basin. The relations of the dead strike the basin, and when he who was dearest to the ghost touches it the spirit twists the thread till it breaks, and the ring falls into the basin. With us a ring is held by a thread over a tumbler, and our unconscious movements swing it till it strikes the hour. How the Karens manage it is less obvious. These savage devices with animated sticks clearly correspond to the more modern 'table-turning.' Here, when the players are honest, the pus.h.i.+ng is certainly _unconscious_.