There is no real distinction between fetishism and idolatry, unless we choose to say that the latter refers to the worship of objects artificially shaped; but many fetishes are so likewise. Nor can we say, with Professor Rialle, that fetishism confounds the unseen agent with the thing itself, while the idolatry of developed polytheism regards the agent as something exterior to the object, an independent existence.[157] For not only does fetishism recognise the power of the supernatural outside of all objects, but the idols of polytheism are unquestionably just as holy, just as much limbs of the gods, as the dolls of the Melanesians. We cannot even take fetishism as a special form of the cult or external worship; for it goes hand in hand with every phase of objective religion. It is quite as prevalent now, in proportion to the general strength of the religious sentiment, as it ever was, and is visible in the sacredness which all sects of the highest religions attach to certain objects and places. When the Christian touches the bone of a saint that he may be healed of an infirmity, or when he speaks of his church edifice as “the house of God,” or when he packs in his trunk a Bible “for luck’s sake,” he is as much a fetish worshipper as the negro _caboceer_ who collects around him a thousand pieces of rubbish because he thinks they have brought him good fortune.[158] Modern folk-lore is full of fetishism, and it is a development of the religious sentiment which flourishes in all times and climes. Amulets, charms, lucky stones, everything that we now call by the familiar term of _mascot_, partakes of the nature of a fetish. Through some fancied potency, not to be found among its physical qualities, it is believed to bring us good fortune. Nor is it a distinctive character of fetish worship, as has been maintained by some, that in it compulsion or constraint is endeavoured to be exercised on the gods to force them to be favourable and exert their power in aid of the supplicant. The earliest prayers are not of this character, as I showed in my last lecture; and, on the other hand, the notion of constraining the gods extended widely in higher religions and, indeed, probably in a metaphysical sense, was taught by the founder of Christianity himself, as in the parable of the unjust judge.