The savage imagination having created out of dreams and other strange experiences a world of invisible and powerful beings who may be friendly or hostile,—so human that they must be accessible to prayers, but often turn a deaf ear to them—must desire sacrifices, yet often reject them—capricious and inscrutable—it became necessary, in order to restore confidence in all the relations of life, that their caprice should somehow be overcome; and to accomplish this three ways were open: first, to increase the prayers and sacrifices until their importunity and costliness should prove irresistible—and this way led to all the magnificence and to all the horrors of religious rites; secondly, to work upon the fears or vulnerability of spirits by beating, starving, slaying, banishing or degrading them; or, thirdly, to constrain them, as men are often constrained, by magical rites and formulæ. From the beginning this necessity is felt. The constraint of spirits by fear or violence is characteristic of Fetichism. The wizards of the Congo catch spirits in traps; or drive them into animals, which they behead; or spear them in some dark corner, and then exhibit their blood upon the spear-head. Passing from the Congo through many ages of progress, we arrive in China, and find that in time of drought, if the city-god neglects to put an end to it, he is first of all entreated; but that failing, his idol is stripped naked and put to stand in the sun; or an iron chain is hung round his neck—the mark of a criminal—till rain falls; or he may be dethroned altogether.[325] With such crude practices, however, we are not now concerned.