object and purpose of the practice determines the attitude of the community towards the practice: if the object is anti-social, the practice is nefarious; and the witch, if "smelled out," is killed. The person who is willing to undertake such nefarious proceedings comes to be credited with a nefarious personality, that is to say, with both the power and the will to do what ordinary, decent members of the community could not and would not do: personal power comes to be the most important, because the most mysterious, characteristic of the man believed to {xiv} be a magician. If we turn to things, such as rain-making, which are socially beneficial, we find a similar growth in the belief that some men have extraordinary power to work wonders on behalf of the tribe. A further stage of development is reached when the man who uses his personal power for nefarious purposes undertakes by means of it to control spirits: magic then tends to pass into fetichism. Similarly, when rain and other social benefits come to be regarded as gifts of the gods, the power of the rainmaker comes to be regarded as a power to procure from the gods the gifts that they have to bestow: magic is displaced by religion. The opposition of principle between magic and religion thus makes itself manifest. It makes itself manifest in that the one promotes social and the other anti-social purposes: the spirit worshipped by any community as its god is a spirit who has the interests of the community at heart, and who _ex officio_ condemns and punishes those who by magic or otherwise work injury to the members of the community. Finally, the decline of the belief in magic is largely due to the discovery that it does not produce the effects it professes to bring about. But the missionary will also dwell on the fact that his hearers feel it to be anti-social and to be condemned alike by their moral sentiments and their religious feeling . . . 70-104 FETICHISM Fetichism is regarded by some as a stage of religious development, or as the form of religion found amongst men at the lowest stage of development known to us. From this the conclusion is sometimes drawn that fetichism is the source of all religion and of all religious values; and, therefore, that (as fetichism has no value) religion (which is an evolved form of fetichism) has no value either. This conclusion is then believed to be proved by the science of religion. In fact, however, students of the science of religion disclaim this conclusion and rightly {xv} assert that the science does not undertake to prove anything as to the truth or the value of religion.