"Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would, no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the generation of unknown effects to a cause analogous to life, which is no other, strictly speaking, than the principle of fetishism....
"Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in a religious state the most remote from the original point of departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn between the earth and an immense living animal, and other similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the vulgar."—Vol. V. p. 38.
He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition of the rude intellect.
"All observable bodies," he says "being thus immediately personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as never again has been produced, and which must have excited in him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity."
Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application; but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst rude thinkers—we do not find any condition of mankind which displays that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with a desire to explain their phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied relation between those objects and the human being. The charm or the amulet—some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases, or bring good-luck—grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of granting his prayer.[50]
We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating the impracticable unmanageable nature of our author's generalizations when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such scientific precision, fixed it.
"Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance—an importance extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious régime to the other."—P. 97.
The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects, and classified them into one species, so they approximated the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became a god.
"For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only, from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a god—that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible, whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist, properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks, led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what was common in these objects, this abstract being could no longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the forest."—P. 101.
This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any natural event is invisible, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism; it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be theologically explained—and there is no event in nature more likely to suggest such explanation—the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose mind had not been solely and purely scientific, would have created for itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]