But it may perhaps be argued that fetichism, except in what I have termed its ultimate evolution, is religion and has religious value; or, to put it otherwise, that what I have represented as the eventual outcome is really a perversion or the decline of fetichism. Then, in the fetichism which is or represents the primitive religion of mankind we meet, according to Professor Höffding, "religion under the guise of desire." Now, not all desires are religious; and the question, which is purely a question of fact, arises whether the desires which fetichism subserves are religious. And in using the word "religious" I will not here place any extravagant meaning on the word; I will take it in the meaning which would be understood by the community in which the owner of a fetich dwells himself. In the tribes described by Colonel Ellis, for instance, there are worshipped personal gods having proper names; and the worship is served by duly appointed priests; and the worshippers consist of a body of {122} persons whose welfare the god has at heart. Such are some of the salient features of what all students of the science of religion would include under the head of the religion of those tribes. Now amongst those same tribes the fetich, or _suhman_, as it is termed by them, is found; and there are several features which make a fetich quite distinguishable from any of the gods which are worshipped there. Thus, the fetich has no body of worshippers: it is the private property, of its owner, who alone makes offerings to it. Its _raison d'être_, its special and only function, is to subserve the private wishes of its owner. In so far as he makes offerings to it he may be called its priest; but he is not, as in the case of the priests of the gods who are worshipped there, the representative of the community or congregation, for a fetich has no plurality of worshippers; and none of the priests of the gods will have anything to do with it. Next, "though offerings are made to the _suhman_ by its owner, they are made in private" (Jevons, _History of Religion_, p. 165)--there is no public worship--and "public opinion does not approve of them." The interests and the desires which the fetich exists to promote are not those of the community: they are antisocial, for, as Colonel Ellis {123} tells us, "one of the special attributes of a _suhman_ is to procure the death of any person whom its worshipper may wish to have removed"--indeed "the most important function of the _suhman_ appears to be to work evil against those who have injured or offended its worshipper."