(3) The charms that are most common are material, the fetich,--so common, indeed, that by the universality of their use, and the prominence given to them everywhere, in houses and on the person, they almost monopolize the religious thought of the Bantu Negro, subordinating other acknowledged points of his theology, dominating his almost entire religious interest, and giving the departmental word "fetich" such overwhelming regard that it has furnished the name distinctive of the native African religious system, _viz._, fetichism. "Fetich" is an English word of Portuguese origin. "It is derived from feitico, 'made,' 'artificial' (compare the old English fetys, used by Chaucer); and this term, used of the charms and amulets worn in the Roman Catholic religion of the period, was applied, by the Portuguese sailors of the eighteenth century, to the deities they saw worshipped by the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa. "De Brosses, a French savant of the last century, brought the word 'fetichism' into use as a term for the type of religion of the lowest races. The word has given rise to some confusion, having been applied, by Comte and other writers, to the worship of the heavenly bodies and of the great features of Nature. It is best to limit it to the worship of such natural objects as are reverenced, not for their own power or excellence, but because they are supposed to be occupied each by a spirit."[29] The native word on the Liberian coast is "gree-gree"; in the Niger Delta, "ju-ju"; in the Gabun country, "monda"; among the cannibal Fang, "biañ"; and in other tribes the same respective dialectic by which we translate "medicine." To a sick native's thought the adjuvant medicinal herb used by the doctor, and its associated efficiency-giving spirit invoked by that same doctor, are inseparable. In the heathen Negro's soul the fetich takes the place, and has the regard, which an idol has with the Hindu and the Chinese. "A fetich, strictly speaking, is little else than a charm or amulet, worn about the person, and set up at some convenient place, for the purpose of guarding against some apprehended evil or securing some coveted good." In the Anglo-African parlance of the Coast fetiches are called by various names, but all signify the same thing. Fetiches may be made of anything of vegetable, animal, or metallic nature, "and need only to pass through the consecrating hands of a native priest to receive all the supernatural powers which they are supposed to possess. It is not always certain that they possess extraordinary powers. They must be tried and give proof of their efficiency before they can be implicitly trusted."[30] A fetich, then, is any material object consecrated by the "oganga," or magic doctor, with a variety of ceremonies and processes, by virtue of which some spirit becomes localized in that object, and subject to the will of the possessor.