Whereas the amulet is worn so as to be visible, the talisman, on the contrary, is hidden so far as possible from the observing eye. It is either placed where it is inconspicuous, as is, for example, the finger ring, or it possesses the appearance of a familiar object. The magical sword gives no visible evidence of its unusual power; the helmet of invisibility resembles an ordinary helmet; the _Tischlein-deck-dich_ of the fairy-tale is in form not unlike any other table. It is with much the same idea that the Soudan negro who sets out upon an undertaking still takes with him some peculiar and accidentally discovered stone, in the hope that it will assist him in danger. This also is an example of a talisman, and not of a fetish.
13. THE ANIMAL ANCESTOR AND THE HUMAN ANCESTOR.
The ideas fundamental to the cult of _human ancestors_, though also connected with soul-beliefs, are radically different from those that gave rise to the fetish. Whereas some mythologists have been inclined to regard fetishism as the primitive form of religion, others have made this claim for ancestor worship. The latter have believed that ancestor worship could be traced back to the very beginnings of culture, and that the god-ideas of the higher religions were a metamorphosis of ancestor ideas. This is corroborated, in their opinion, by the fact that in the age of natural religions the ruler or the aristocracy very generally claimed descent from the gods, and that the ruler and the hero were even worshipped as gods. The former is illustrated by the genealogy of Greek families; the latter, by the Roman worship of emperors, which itself but represented an imitation of an Oriental custom that was once very common. All these cases, however, are clearly secondary phenomena, transferences of previously existing god-ideas to men who were either living or had already died. But even apart from this, the hypothesis is rendered completely untenable by the facts with which the history of totemism and of the earlier, more primitive conditions has made us familiar. Not a trace of ancestor worship is to be found among really primitive men. We have clear proof of this in their manner of disposing of the dead. So far as possible, the dead are left lying where they happen to be, and no cult of any kind is connected with them. Totemism, moreover, gives evidence of the fact that the cult of animal ancestors long anteceded that of human ancestors. Thus, then, the theory that ancestor worship was the primitive religion belongs essentially to an age practically ignorant of totemism and its place in myth development, as well as of the culture of primitive man. This era of a purely _a priori_ psychology of religion still entertained the supposition, rooted in Biblical tradition, of an original state of pure monotheism. In so far as this view was rejected, fetishism and ancestor worship were generally rivals as regards the claim to priority in the succession of religious ideas. The only exception occurred when these practices were regarded as equally original, as they were, essentially, in the theories of Herbert Spencer, Julius Lippert, and others. In this event, the original form of the fetish was held to be an ancestral image which had become an object of cult.