The  intervention  of  the  scientific  spirit  has  only  recently  been
direct  and  explicit ;  but  not  the  less  has  it  been  concerned  in  all
the  successive  modifications  of  the  religious  spirit. If  Man  had
been  no  more  capable  than  monkeys  and  carnivorous  animals  of
comparing,  abstracting,  and  generalizing,  he  would  have  remained
for  ever  in  the  rude  fetichism  which  their  imperfect  organization
forbids  their  surmounting. Man,  however,  can  perceive  likeness
between  phenomena,  and  observe  their  succession :  and  when  these
characteristic  faculties  had  once  found  aliment  and  guidance  under
the  first  theological  instigation,  they  gathered  strength  perpetually,
and  by  their  exercise  reduced,  more  and  more  rapidly,  the  influence
of  the  religious  philosophy  by  which  they  had  been  cherished. The
first  general  result  o'f  the  rise  of  this  spirit  of  observation  and
induction  seems  to  me  to  have  been  the  passage  from  fetichism  to
polytheism,  beginning,  as  all  such  changes  do,  with  the  highest
order  of  minds,  and  reaching  the  multitude  at  last. To  under-
stand this,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that,  as  all  fetich  faith  relates  to
some  single  and  determinate  object,  the  belief  is  of  an  individual
and  concrete  nature. This  quality  suits  well  with  the  particular
and  unconnected  character  of  the  rudely-material  observations
proper  to  an  infant  state  of  the  human  mind :  so  that  the  exact
accordance  between  the  conception  and  the  investigation  that  is
found  wherever  our  understandings  are  at  work,  is  evident  in  the
present  case. The  expansion  of  the  spirit  of  observation  caused
by  the  first  theory,  imperfect  as  it  was,  must  destroy  the  balance
which,  at  length,  can  not  be  maintained  at  all  but  by  some  modifi-
cation of  the  original  philosophy. Thus  the  great  revolution  which
carried  men  on  from  fetichism  to  polytheism  is  due  to  the  same  men-
tal causey,  though  they  may  not  be  so  conspicuous,  that  now  produce
all  scientific  revolutions, — which  always  arise  out  of  a  discordance
between  facts  and  principles. Thus  did  the  growing  generalization


TRANSITION   TO   POLYTHEISM. 559

of  human  observations  necessitate  the  same  process  in  regard  to
the  corresponding  theological  conceptions,  and  occasion  the  trans-
formation of  fetichism  into  simple  polytheism ;  for  the  difference
between  the  divinities  of  the  two  systems  is  the  essential  one  that
the  gods,  properly  so  called,  have,  from  their  indeterminate  resi-
dence, a  more  general  and  abstract  character. 