Sentence Examples:
Others bring queer little mechanical contrivances, which are manipulated in a manner to show the correspondence between certain chances; whilst yet another section quite frankly display all sorts of fetishes, to some of which they attach a quite serious importance.
Finally, the totemic fetish is always associated in totemic regions with animal and plant totems, and is also closely connected with the idea, even here permeating totemic belief, that there were anthropomorphic ancestors who left these fetishes as magic-working legacies.
To the class of holy objects belong all charms, amulets, fetishes, sacred animals, and other things of whatever kind, which are believed in any country to possess a different order of powers from those which scientific investigation discovers in them.
These simpler rites are carried on almost openly, and are accompanied by all sorts of childish incantations, with such nonsensical fetishes as red rags, dried snakes and lizards, human bones, or portions of human organs, stolen perhaps from graveyards.
My fetish of intellectual integrity went down like a ninepin before the appeal of a woman no longer young and distinctly foolish, but full of those dear contradictions and irrelevancies that will always make flesh and blood prevail against a syllogism.
Just as it tolerates fetishes though it disapproves of them and is afraid of them, so it tolerates the magician, though it is afraid of him and does not cordially approve of him, even when he benefits an individual client without injuring the community.
I make no pretence to a thorough knowledge of African Fetish in all its schools, but I feel sure no wandering student of the subject in Western Africa can avoid recognizing the existence of at least four distinct forms of development of the Fetish idea.
In Peru the Spaniards found a splendid civilization among the strange races of the Incas, a condition of order which many modern states might envy, a religion absolutely free from fetish worship, and a standard of morality which has never been surpassed.
The totem is a class of material objects (never an isolated object, thus differing from the fetish) for which uncivilized man professes a superstitious veneration, believing in a sort of mysterious connection between himself and each representative of the class of objects.
It is largely a matter of chance whether the mate chosen in accordance with the ideals of romantic love and because of some fascinating trait which acts as an erotic fetish or in conformity with a parental fixation will prove a congenial companion through life.
Some writers incline to believe that Egyptian thought had not yet reached the point where the polytheistic idea springs up, that they were still content with those fetishes which retained no slight hold upon their imaginations until a much later period.
To the gambler fortune appears to be an occult power, the aid of which is not infrequently invoked by means of various fanciful fetishes, which for the moment acquire a real virtue, as being likely to propitiate the invisible influence which presides over speculation.
The image of a saint, as is rightly maintained, may still occasionally degenerate into a fetish, as occurs when it is regarded as the seat of magical powers, or when its owner believes that he possesses in it a household idol capable of bringing him weal or woe.
The primitive fetish, or fetishes of waters out of which the specific type, afterwards personified, was evolved and formed, were at first so bound to the concrete form of the phenomenon, that although animated, it could not assume a human aspect and form.
If the malady of the patient does not appear to yield to such applications, the fetish is again consulted, and in some cases, as a further expedient, the priest takes a fowl and ties it to a stick, by which operation it is barbarously squeezed to death.
It is only after the various senses have reported to the central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolizing peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human beings.
Unfortunately he lived in the only country where his arrogant pretensions would then have been countenanced, though, owing to the present acceptance of England and everything English, he has become something of a fetish abroad, now that he is exposed and discredited at home.
Having made these preparatory arrangements, looking earnestly into the water, he begins to snap his fingers, and addressing the fetish, extols his power, telling him that the people have arrived to consult him, and requesting him to come and give the desired answer.
These are a few out of many indications that the small and senseless things which have become almost or quite fetishes were by no means such at first, but were mystically connected with the heavenly elements and splendors, like the animal forms in the zodiac.
The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms, had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of the fetish, the internal duplication of the external animation and personification of objects.
Here is a very important personage, a "mammy," generally referred to as the "Women's Queen," and under her care and tuition, and that of her assistant fetish women, the little girl remains for a period varying from two to five or six months, or even longer.
They invested it with a protecting and invincible virtue as though it were a fetish made by their own hands, for they were ignorant, and in other respects did not differ appreciably from the rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own creations.
Whenever this was the case, it was known that an African was about to be brought before his commanding officer for some neglect of duty or breach of discipline; and these fetishes had been placed there to induce the colonel to deal leniently with the offender.
In the case of animals the fetish or special myth is transitory, appearing and disappearing in accordance with his actual perceptions; while in man there is a persistent image of the fetish in his mind, to which he timidly ascribes the same power as to the thing itself.
As Faulkner put it, Anderson's "was the fumbling for exactitude, the exact word and phrase within the limited scope of a vocabulary controlled and even repressed by what was in him almost a fetish of simplicity ... to seek always to penetrate to thought's uttermost end."
And because his clarity of vision enabled him to see the sham, superstition, and hypocrisy of the prevalent fetishes that passed for creeds, and of the tyrannies that passed for government, he imagined that others would see these great evils as soon as they were revealed to them.
Standing in the full glare of the sun, these pans naturally become empty in the course of time through evaporation, which fact the natives explain by saying that the fetishes drink it, and it is to them ocular proof of the existence and material being of their deities.
If it is compulsorily perpetual, whether at the dictates of a religious dogma, or as a mere fetish, it is no longer on a natural basis, and it is no longer moral, for the restraint of a man who has spent his whole life in a prison is of no value for life.
At such times, too, he would recall the devil-sacrifice he had witnessed within the fetish enclosure, when the victim had been drawn by an irresistible fascination to his doom, and would start back in horror, as though to avoid the mysterious weapon flashing forth to transfix him.
Beginning with the mysterious conception of some particular spring as a malignant or beneficent fetish which, although personified, still retains its concrete form, the classifying action of the intelligence gradually constructs, from its points of resemblance to other springs, a generic type which includes them all.
In conversation with the numerous real estate dealers, he learned, moreover, that many of the attempts at purchasing, were foredoomed to failure when made; that to own a home, in a great many cases had become a fetish, and was, therefore, not based upon a practical consideration in the beginning.
He boldly gave his position, and declared that marriage was a fetish, and that its basis on a union for life without regard to the feelings of the parties was a fountain of corruption, and was the source of the monopolistic instincts that now cursed the human race.
Crowds will hear no more of the words divinity and religion, in whose name they were so long enslaved; but they have never possessed so many fetishes as in the last hundred years, and the old divinities have never had so many statues and altars raised in their honor.
Even Harry felt a thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke.
The same process which constitutes the fetish and myth also constitutes science in its conditions and form, and here we find the unique fact which generates them both; science, like myth, would be impossible without apprehension, without the individuation of ideas, and the classification and specification of types.
The objects used as fetishes by the Ainu, sticks, skulls of animals, claws, paws, mistletoe, stones, etc., are all looked upon as animate, with a distinct life of their own, with power to protect their worshipers in time of danger, heal them when sick, and bless them with general prosperity.
In a community where class consciousness was such a characteristic of the people and where caste was almost a fetish it was rather remarkable that such connections brought no odium upon the inferiors, but, on the contrary, automatically elevated the lesser to the caste of the higher contracting party.
Alan opened the tin box and lifting out the fetish, gave it to the priestess, who took it and with a serpentine movement of extraordinary grace glided from her chair on to her knees, holding the mask above her head in both hands, then thrice covered her face with it.
The horrible climate influences even the aborigines, nearly every second man or woman one sees being covered with sores, or suffering from yaws, elephantiasis, or some equally loathsome disease; and their religious belief and fetish customs are tinged with the gloom which seems to settle over the whole delta.
In the latter fear he was justified, as writers who saw totems and fetishes everywhere were at that time rife; and there are not wanting popular writers of the present day just as extravagant, who, while highly enthusiastic over the achievements of the school, only dimly appreciate the anthropological standpoint.
Besides this, an operation performed in virtue of a mechanical rule, or fetish, like the supposed decision of the English national mind against new endowments, does not easily inspire respect in its adversaries, and make their opposition feeble and hardly to be persisted in, as an operation evidently done in virtue of reason and justice might.
This was evidently the hanging wardrobe, and on it hung some few fetish charms, and a beautiful ornament of wild cat and leopard tails, tied on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the center of which was a little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt buttons.
To endow the little every-day objects that surround us?a certain picture in a certain light, a certain clock or stove in a certain shadow, a certain corner of the curtain when the wind moves it?with the fetish-magic of natural "animism"; that is the real childlike trick, and that is what Dickens does.
It was a talisman and fetish to him; and when he came up from the river at evening when his work was done, he looked upward always to see the green boughs of the tree at the square little window of his garret under the deep eaves, and above an archway of old brown-red brick.
If the ancient barbarians have worshiped mountains, rivers, serpents, trees, fetishes of every kind; if the wise Egyptians worshiped crocodiles, rats, onions, do we not see nations who believe themselves wiser than they, worship with reverence a bread, into which they imagine that the enchantments of their priests cause the Divinity to descend?
These Fetish men and women, too, for there are Fetish women, and, consequently Fetish children, have spies in different directions, forming as many links of communication between the priesthood in various parts of the country, so that very few occurrences take place of which they have not the means of making themselves acquainted
At its roots were placed odd bits of crockery, a rough doll-shaped image, and other objects, all regarded as fetish and likely to lull the anger of the mighty fetish which kept the people in its grip, and which held sway at the execution house and temple to which Dick had been led.
John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping her without being rude he let her ramble on.
During three days her body remained exposed to view, and vast crowds passed before it; a whole people hastened to the convent, an interminable procession of devotees hungering after hope, who rubbed medals, chaplets, pictures, and missals against the dead woman's dress, to obtain from her one more favor, a fetish bringing happiness.
Christophe had also let fly certain disrespectful remarks about the sacred fetish: but they had preferred to close their eyes to that: and perhaps his attacks, not yet very offensive, had not been without their influence, unconsciously, in making them so eager to enroll Christophe before he had time to deliver himself manfully.
The old idea of valuable mental discipline for all kinds of mental work to be gained from protracted difficult formal education is now rejected by educational psychologists, but its prevalence in the popular mind serves to make "higher education" still something of a fetish, from which marvelous results, not capable of precise comprehension, are anticipated.
He had not yet been long enough at play to reach that stage when the gambler is the servant of small private fetishes when an incident at the beginning of the day can fill him with fears or hopes, and all life has a meaning which expresses itself in the run of the cards.
Whereas the totem, particularly the totem animal, retains in great part the nature of a soul, the fetish completely assumes the character of a demon, differing from the demons resident in storms, solitary chasms, and other uncanny places only in the fact that it is inseparable from the discovered or artificially fashioned object.
The theory which has hitherto been generally accepted by mythologists, even by those who profess Comte's great principle of historical evolution, is that man began with special fetishes, that these were combined in comprehensive types to form polytheistic hierarchies, and hence he rose by an analogous process to a more or less vague conception of monotheism.
Many a young woman, in order to deaden her senses to the unsuspected lure of the reproductive instinct by what is really an awkward attempt at sublimation, makes a fetish of dress and social position and considers only the marriage of convenience; or, on the other hand, she scorns men altogether and throws herself into a "career."
I was confident in my own mind that the man who had been operated on was sick, and that what I had seen was a fetish cure; but one of my French friends told me that it was a ceremony of common occurrence, and that the man was worshiping his head in order to obtain good fortune.
During the past day the digging in the courtyard had ceased; and this circumstance, together with the sounds we heard (the adoration of some great fetish, or idol), made us tremble in our hearts lest the following day might see us placed in that more horrible prison, from whence there could be no release but by death.
In every age some men carried the torch of progress and handed it to some other, and it has been carried through all the dark ages of barbarism, and had it not been for such men we would have been naked and uncivilized tonight, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed on our skins, dancing around some dried snake fetish.
I wore the plume of eagle and ostrich feathers, my dress was covered with fetishes, I pulled on the boots with bells, and with my bow and arrows slung on my back, my spear and blunderbuss, my knives and my double-handed sword, I led the men to battle and brought back skulls and slaves.
Women who worship as a fetish the power of this right to petition may well catalog this fallacy with those other American fallacies that "taxation without representation is tyranny"; that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that the Government guarantees "equal rights for all and special privileges for none."
She realized the full gravity of the situation, she felt it a turning point, she had attached an almost fetish-like importance to the insignia of her virtuous resolutions, but in the wild desire to assert her womanhood that mastered her now, she was prepared to abandon anything and everything that stood in the way of its accomplishment.
She had sat down and worshiped him with all her soul and strength, heedless of her father's good-humored raillery, heedless of her mother's tearful entreaties and solemn warnings; she had set up her idol and bowed down before it, only to find after a little time that it was a very ordinary kind of fetish indeed.
He belongs to the school of evolution, and his book strongly confirms the truths of that theory; since from the primitive germs of myth, from the various and most simple forms of fetishes among all races, he gradually evolves these rude images into more, complex and anthropomorphic forms, until he attains the limits of natural and positive science.
His success may be attributed to great cunning and the large force he always headed, together with the power his fetishes gave him over his fellows, who blindly followed his instructions and fought desperately under his prophecies, though his life shows the anomaly of a great leader being entirely destitute of every particle of personal intrepidity.
Here was a man who was willing, for himself, to waive all the usual objections, but suddenly produced a new cult, an esoteric worship, a tribal fetish of his own, evidently a very powerful fetish, to be propitiated by costly sacrifices, which he regarded himself as obviously necessary, and had no doubt would be easily understood by other people.
Although in man the fetish retains its personality in his memory, and becomes the cause of hopes and fears throughout his life, while its effect on the animal is only transitory, and at the actual moment of perception; yet this does not invalidate the truth of the principle, nor prove that their impulses and genesis are not identical.
In the case of savage and primitive man the inward image of the fetish without its bodily presence is, owing to the process already described, not merely valid as a real entity, but it becomes a mysterious apparition in the sphere of fancy, in a way analogous to our belief in the reality of things seen in a dream or in moments of hallucination.
The pyramid has disappeared as a form of royal sepulcher, to be replaced by a long gloomy corridor cut in the rock; its walls covered with wild and fetish pictures of death and judgment: a sort of magic hall, crowded with mysterious symbols the most monstrous and complicated that any system of human superstition has yet invented.
In one village, numbering one thousand heads, the local ruler, who was fetish-man and king in the same person, consented to show them "the great fetish," which was surrounded by such extraordinary veneration and fear that the people did not dare to approach the ebony chapel, covered with a rhinoceros hide, and make offerings any nearer than fifty paces.
The most advanced of them are still, from the rationalist point of view, in the position of using the Bible as a fetish; and men who as public teachers regularly resort to a primitive priestly literature for sanctions and cues to current conduct have no right whatever to protest against those who show the people what the sacrosanct literature really is.
That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance.
Beyond the instant of medicine and dentistry, he had noted that "doctor" was an honorary term, conferred upon men who had done something notable in the evolution of mankind; but he was soon to learn that the title had become a fetish with his people, sought after and preempted by any and everyone without even the remotest right to claim it.
It would be more just and true to say that most of Rome's misfortunes, and Italy's too, have been the result of the instinct to oppose all that is, whether good or bad, as soon as it has existed for a while; in short, the original sin of Italians is an original detestation of that unity of which the empty name has been a fetish for ages.
She was one of those naturally refined but less than half-educated, timid creatures who are to be found now and then painfully earning the bread which is very bitter to them in richer people's houses, and preserving in their little silent souls some fetish in the shape of a scrap of gentility, which is their sole comfort, or almost their sole comfort.
These reflections of the sympathetic Professor may be very grateful to the habitual smoker, who influenced by a natural feeling of attachment, looks lovingly on his pipe and pouch, as he would on old friends grown dearer with time; the older and more worn the closer he clings to them, till by-and-by he talks to them as would primitive man to his fetish.
More than ever our age of unrest makes us the prey of impulses, and to the majority of our contemporaries, the robe, half green and half yellow (by recalling to them the worship of common sense), will become a fetish, more precious than all the amulets with which superstition loves to adorn logic, or to incorporate fantastic outline in the classic setting of beautiful jewels.
I have dealt here with Fetish as far as the position of the human being is concerned, because this phase may make it more comprehensible to my fellow white men who regard the human being as the main thing in the created universe, but I must beg you to remember that this idea of the importance of the human race is not held by the African.
By the connivance of the female servant who was in their interest they found their way once more into their apartment, bringing with them the fetish image, whose body they partly stripped, exhibiting upon it certain sanguine marks which they had daubed upon it with red paint, but which they said were the result of the lashes which it had received from the horsewhip.
He receives the presents, and either puts a little of the rum on the head of every image or pours a small quantity on the ground before the platform as an offering to the whole pantheon; then, taking a brass pan with water in it, he sits down with the pan between him and the fetishes, and his inquirers also seat themselves to await the result.
Truly, if anything could bring luck it ought to be something ordered with a kind and charitable view from poor and suffering people, but it is rather hard to promptly conclude that her Majesty believes in fetish because she benevolently ordered a cradle from the blind, and that she had no higher motive than to get something which would bring luck to her grandchild.
It looks, that bowl, as innocent as an ordinary kitchen utensil as it hangs in its place on the wall, surrounded by trophies of a more fearsome nature, but not even the guillotine of the Reign of Terror had seen and smelt more blood than had run over its rim to putrefy in its depths and to be eventually turned, mixed with certain herbs, into fetish medicines.
The beings or powers that man looked to find and which he supposed he found, whether as fetishes in this or that object, or as daemons in the sky, the fire or the wind, in beast or bird or tree, were taken to be personal beings and personal powers, bearing the same relation to that in which, or through which, they manifested themselves, as man bears to his body.
As I have said, it was essentially a religious movement, but to the success of the propaganda, which elevated the cellular system almost to a fetish, there were contributing causes of a more practical nature,-the admitted evils of unregulated association, the urgent need of a new method of construction, the greater security of prisoners, and the economy of administration, resulting from the employment of a smaller staff for supervision.
"One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."
Whatever we may think of the doctrines of the Bible, it is safe to predict that the book will live long after the myths that surround its origin shall have been dispelled; nay, all the more, when it shall cease to be worshiped as a fetish will men appreciate its abiding claims to their reverence, and it will continue to hold its honored place in the libraries of the nations.
When thought penetrates more deeply into the physical laws of the universe, and is also more rationally engaged in the psychical examination of man's own nature, ideas are classified in more general types, as in the primitive construction of fetishes, anthropomorphic idols, and physical principles; and in this way an explicit and purely ideal system is formed, in which the images correspond with the fanciful and physical types which were previously created.
From this fact may be inferred the informality of the men's day-time attire; and the same note is sounded in the whole range of the cottage life, so that once a visitor from the world outside, who had been exasperated beyond endurance by the absence of form among us (if such an effect could be from a cause so negative), burst out with the reproach, "Oh, you make a fetish of your informality!"
We have seen, above, the reason why fetishism becomes eventually distasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man, which are worshiped by the community, are worshiped as having the interests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of the community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the individual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and loss of other individuals and of the community at large.
All this seemed so natural and plausible that the word, and the idea of the adoration of fetishes became quite general; the theory of the worship of fetishes penetrated rapidly, and took deep root in the public mind, it found its way very readily into school books and manuals, and we were taught that the religion of savages consists solely in the worship of fetishes, and learned writers draw the conclusion that fetishism must necessarily have been the primitive religion of humanity.