even asking who is within? and, could they
be seen? If we were to hear of a tribe
of naked Makebelieves, who went about their
mud villages dropping little bits of torn
leaves, or fragments of "tappa" stamped with
their "totems" and sign manuals, at each other's
wigwam doors, what would we think of them?
How we would chuckle over our own superior
enlightenment, and pityingly make mouths at
their gross savagery! And if these little bits
of leaves and fragments of tappa were held
by the Makebelieves to mean kindness, and
good will, and, I will serve you on the first
opportunity, and, God bless you and all the house,
and, my heart is yours, and, I hope you are all
well, and, I am devoted to you, and, have you
had the measles? and, I am immensely attached
to you and hope you are not going to be scalped,
for then I can never call again — and if all
these fine things were never by any chance
translated into any other language of deeds save
this dropping of torn leaves and fragments of
tappa at the wigwam doors—what a throwing
up of spiritual caps there would be, and what a
footing of spiritual "triumph dances," and what
an universal crowing and spiritual cockadoodledoodom
all through Christendom at the contrast
between its own crystalline civilisation and the
bleak blank ignorance of the savages in the
wilds! For fetishes have the not uncommon
power of blinding human eyes, and making our
own black appear snow-white but our neighbour's
light-grey the jettiest of jet black, as a
compensation. Then there is another fetish
connected with this matter of visiting, namely,
the day or days. We in England have a loose,
sprawling, all legs-and-arms fetish, extending
over the six working days of the week, and
even invading the seventh; and unless we are
fashionable, and in London, we cannot contract
these loose-lying members, and bring them up
into a compact little once-a-week visiting-day
fetish. The French, on the contrary, have theirs
so retracted, and contracted, and circumscribed,
and pared down, that you mortally offend its
airy laws if you do not remember it has only
one day assigned to it out of the seven—only
one day in all the week when you can go and
talk scandal with madame, and carry bonbons
to mademoiselle, and envy or admire, according
to your sex and the circumstances attending.

Again, the necessity for giving large parties,
if you would make yourself a somebody in
society, is nothing but a fetish set up on two
stout legs—ostentation and rivalry. The need
of an introduction before you can speak
comfortably with your neighbour, and the absolute
impossibility of exchanging a genial word with
a well-bred stranger in any public place or on
any neutral ground save a railway carriage, is
also a fetish, and one that deserves more speedy
annihilation than many another. As do all
customs, habits, and observances which make forms
of more account than humanity, and which stint
and stunt and check the outgrowth of nature in
favour of a made-up gree-gree, without meaning,
truth, or beauty in it.

Then what fetishism reigns in the political
world! A fetishism almost as big as that whole
world itself, having just a few free corners and
sun-lighted spots where the soul of man may
rest and be thankful. The American Union is
a fetish—a ghastly, blood-bedaubed, howling,
shrieking fetish. The maintenance of iniquitous
treaties because they were once made, is a fetish;
and the preservation of the Pope, poor old
gentleman, as the triply-crowned sovereign of the
Catholic world and the obstructive of Italy, is
again a fetish of the same class. The Custom-
house is a fetish; and the passport system is a
fetish; that Austria should have a seaboard is
a bouncing fetish; and the Balance of Power
is a highly etherealised esoteric fetish, always
turning up in unexpected places. Fetishes
all are close societies, and corporate bodies, and
brotherly bondages to which a man must belong
if he wish to succeed in any certain walk or
work, and without which union the best work
he can turn out will not secure him bread and
cheese, not to speak of beer and butter.
Fetishes are all ordinations—mere muttered charms
which are assumed to make a man better than
he was before, and something different, too, to
what he was before. Not by virtue of his own
truth and goodness and insight into spiritual
things and fitness for guiding men's souls up to
God, but by virtue of the charm—by the grace
of the verbal fetish. Fetishes, the vows of
monks and nuns, when once the term of
spontaneous assent is passed, and the human life is
held by the pressure of the vow, and not by the
free gift of the free will; and something of
fetishism is in the dress, too, as well as in the
vow: though this may have a meaning, which
fetishes do not often have, in that it enables the
wearer to pass freely and without insult, where
the ordinarily clad could not go.

A fetish lies in the long hair of women and
the cropped polls of men; why may not women
(if they like it) cut their hair short, and put their
heads into their baths every morning, without
being called masculine? And why may not men
wear their hair long and flowing as far as nature
will permit, without being called effeminate?
I own I don't like to see either the one or the
other, but then I also know that in this I
am a fetish worshipper, and by no means a free-
born Briton exercising an unbiased judgment.
A little while ago, a shaven chin was an absolute
fetish; now, a bearded one seems as if it were
going to usurp the place, and be a fetish in its
turn. Once, we had a fetish called Honour, to
whom men did reverence with blood, and
often with their lives; now, we have a fetish
called Success, who is almost as cruel and
quite as untrue. For, let a man be never so
great and never so good, and his life's work
of never so noble a pattern, yet if he does not
attain worldly success (as represented by money,
chiefly, in our country), we immediately hold
him tabooed and ourselves released from the
obligation of love and respect, pooh-poohing his
work as of no account and not coming into the
sum of human progress. For we are so blind,