If, as is customary, we employ the term 'fetish' to mean any natural object to which demoniacal powers are ascribed, or, as the word itself (Fr. _fétiche_ from Lat. _facticius_, artificially constructed) indicates, an artificial, inanimate object of similar powers, a wide gulf appears at first glance to separate the fetish from the psyche. Nevertheless, the two are very closely related, as is indicated by the totemic origin of certain primitive forms of fetishes. In the cults of totemic clans, magic stones and pieces of wood are reverenced and preserved, being regarded as powerful instruments that were originally fashioned, according to legend, by magic beings of a distant past. Into the objects has passed the magic power of these ancestors. By their agency, the plants and animals which man utilizes as food may be increased; through them, evils may be averted and, in particular, diseases may be cured. The universal characteristic of the fetish, however, over and above this special mode of origin, is the fact that it is supposed to harbour a soul-like, demoniacal being. In fact, most of the phenomena of so-called fetishism, and those which are still regarded as typical of it, are to be found outside of totemic cult. It is primarily African fetishism, a cult form which is apparently independent of totemism, that has given its characteristic stamp to the conception of the fetish. Among the Soudan negroes, fetishes generally consist of artificially fashioned wooden objects, not infrequently bearing a grimacing likeness of a human face. As regards the possession of magical powers, however, they do not differ from the so-called churingas of the Australians, although the latter are, as a rule, natural objects that have been picked up accidentally and that differ from ordinary stones and pieces of wood only in their striking form. It is clearly the form, both in the case of the artificial as well as of the natural fetish, that has caused the inanimate object to be regarded as a demoniacal vehicle of the soul. Yet it is not a lifeless object as such that constitutes a fetish, but the fact that a demoniacal, soul-like being is believed to lurk within it as an agency of magical activities.