A sceptic is scarcely likely to give a sympathetic report of a religion he has discarded, and Bosman’s negro is no exception to the rule. He describes the outward tangible aspect of fetishism, but ignores its spiritual interpretation, and the dogmatic definitions above follow in the same path of error. Fetishism and the fetish, as thus defined, do not exist, except in ‘incomplete observations’; they certainly are nowhere to be found in West Africa, the typical land of fetishism. ‘Every native with whom I have conversed on the subject,’ writes Ellis, ‘has laughed at the possibility of it being supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice to some such object as a stone, which of itself it would be perfectly obvious to his senses was a stone only and nothing more’ (15, 192). So the Maori _wakapakoko_ were only thought to possess virtue or peculiar sanctity from the presence of the god they represented when dressed up for worship; at other times they were regarded only as bits of ordinary wood (69, 212), and Brinton affirms that ‘nowhere in the world did man ever worship a stick or a stone as such’ (6, 131). All cases of Fetishism, when examined, show that the worship is paid to an intangible power or spirit incorporated in some visible form, and that the fetish is merely the link between the worshipper and the object of his worship. Any definition therefore which takes no account of the spiritual force behind the material object is seen to be incomplete and superficial, as it ignores the essential conception of the worship. Dr. Tylor enlarges the scope of the word, classing Fetishism as a subordinate department of Animism, and defining it as the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or conveying influence through, certain material objects. He includes in it the worship of stocks and stones, ‘and thence it passes by an imperceptible gradation into idolatry’ (71, ii. 144). It is these imperceptible gradations which blur all the outlines of the rigid systematist, and make an exclusive classification impossible. Encouragement is found in the reflection that exclusive classifications are almost unknown to science, and, where met with, are generally due to ignorance, waiting for greater knowledge or further research to provide the intermediate links which everywhere blend class with class, species with species. But when the group is studied in its area of characterisation, certain features stand prominently forward, and by a study of these the essential characteristics of the whole class can be determined. II. ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS OF FETISHISM The characteristic features of fetishism, and particularly of West African fetishism, are as follows:—