powers which help and the powers which hinder; most homage, perhaps, to those which hinder him, that he may appease them. Many things to which praise and thankofferings are now made were once regarded with very different feelings; for a knowledge of objects has re-acted on man's subjective modes of viewing them, as it constantly does upon ours. This phase of moral growth is not peculiar to Fetichism, and the latest monotheistic conceptions of its divinity are immensely more humane, and therefore less divine, than its earlier ones. When we remember

how slowly the mind of man opens to abstract ideas, and how difficult (according to the observation in the Mahabharata) an invisible path is to corporeal beings, we shall understand why it was necessary for man to make concrete representations of nature under its infinitely varied aspects.

In the infancy of his existence man realised, as we cannot do, that each animal, tree, plant, stream, river, wind, zephyr, cloud, had a distinct personality of its own, and exhibited at different times, like himself, differing feelings and passions. He rejoiced in their friendly contact, and felt the full force of their rude handling when they marred his handiwork in their passion, as he in his ungoverned passions had frequently marred it. He had clearer, harder conceptions of their personality than we have, for he knew nothing of the laws of nature, and was slowly acquiring, under every possible disadvantage, knowledge which enabled us to formulate such laws. It is to Fetichism Humanity owes the institution of the family. Its foundation and conservation were, therefore, objects of the last importance, for only by means of them could man then, or afterwards, form the tribe, clan, city, or nation, and realise, as he now may do, the great whole that comprises tribes, clans, cities, and nations-Humanity. It was only through the family that man realised-faintly and imperfectly it may be the solidarity and continuity of the human race. Men had been before him, and men there would be after him, and the knowledge-whether speculative or practical, much or little-which his predecessors handed down to him, he must in turn hand down to others. Under his roof-tree the past was represented by his parents, the future by his descendants, while he himself, a connecting link between them, was the present. It was in Fetichist times, as we have said elsewhere, that the uses of fire, clothes, and agriculture were discovered, and to those times we owe, further,

the invention of speech, and the bringing of families into relationships, which form the base of any government or civilisation worthy of the name. Language bears on it an ineffaceable stamp of its Fetichist origin. We do not allude so much to the numerous words which imitate sounds to convey meaning, but to that universal mark that every object, natural or artificial, is spoken of as either of the masculine or feminine gender. The neuter gender appears to have been a late innovation.

Our modern science and philosophy still bear many traces of their Fetichist origin. Savans cannot get rid of fictions, or disembarrass themselves of the tendency towards personifications. "Their speech bewrayeth them," let the protest that they are none of its disciples be ever so loudly or scornfully expressed. Our language is saturated with Fetichism. We cannot frame a poem or a scientific theory -both of which are subjective creations merely-into which it does not enter. The dawning mind of a child, as Grote observed, regards all objects as Fetiches. Children treat their dolls, toys, carts, and playthings as living things, punishing them when they are "naughty," caressing them when they are good. Should they hurt themselves against a chair, a stair, or a floor, straightway the chair, stair, and floor are beaten for being naughty in hurting "baby," and the children are satisfied. Perhaps the man who smiles at the children for so feeling and acting may discover a similar disposition of mind when annoyed at any obstacle which may come in his way. He who kicked the bicycle he could not ride is not much unlike the African who angrily beats his wooden god for not acceding to his wishes and prayers.

How impossible it is for a child to realise the abstraction Death has been exemplified in Wordsworth's lovely poem, "We are Seven," in which a child still speaks of her brothers and sisters as of an unbroken family, although two of them are dead; for do not their graves remain to her? The personification of abstractions is constantly witnessed in science, and it both helps and hinders its advance. It helps while the abstractions are remembered to be abstractions, and hinders when this is forgotten and the abstractions are treated as entities. It would seem as if man's intellectual weakness was such that he could not long sustain himself in an atmosphere of pure abstraction, and that he needs must lay hold of some concrete to steady himself, or make a concrete of some abstraction to focus his thoughts.

It was by Fetichists that animals were domesticated, and what labour that entailed we can hardly form any conception of now. Civilised man would, because of his pride, find the task a very difficult one indeed-a pride unknown to his belated ancestors. All societies of men have some domestic animals. In Fetichist times also there was a systematic cultivation of the plants useful to man. The clearing of the planet, so as to render it fit for man's habitation, was done then; and then it was that love of country, love of home-spot, a love so necessary as the basis of civilisation, grew up. How deep this attachment to the roof-tree and its surroundings was might be seen where negroes were torn from their homes and driven to other spots. We mention these characteristics of Fetichism because it was in Fetichism civilisation began, and there is a tendency in man to put out of sight and ignore his lowly beginnings. The branches and verdure of a tree may be a more attractive sight than its roots; but there could be no branches and verdure without the roots. When the student endeavours to estimate how much was done in Fetichist times, he is astonished at it. The wonderful patience, tenderness. wisdom, energy, and goodness then exhibited fill his heart with admiring gratitude to his lowly, much-enduring, and much-labouring ancestors.

It is in Fetichism that we find the germs of that institution which afterwards developed into a priesthood. In the earliest stages of Fetichism the old of both sexes were left to perish, or their lives were cut short by their children when they had ceased to be of much usc. It is easy to understand the reasons for this treatment. Nomadic man and hunting man did not want to be burthened with useless lives, so the young of both sexes, but especially of the female sex, were exposed. In fact, there was a systematic abandonment of the sick, and infanticide of girls. Illustrations of the truth of these facts are to be found in every book which professes to give an account of uncivilised man. In the later stages of Fetichism the lives of the old were spared (especially of old men), and as they bore with them memories of families and tribes, and were able to recount past exploits and adventures, they won attention and respect, if not reverence. In this altered attitude towards the old we see a change in the social condition of man. He is ceasing to be nomadic, and is slowly giving up a pastoral for an agricultural life. Old men, moreover, knew of many

remedies for physical ailments, and it was to them reference would be made by sick and wounded persons. However this may be, old men became gradually invested with something solemn and mysterious from their knowledge of former generations of men-those who were no longer present, but had fallen asleep-for so death was regarded by primitive man. Death was an abstraction to him, as it always is to the young; and it is only slowly that we begin to appre-, hend what it is, concretely speaking. More; the old, having seen the world, had had much experience, and the necessity of consulting them about marriages, friendships, tribal or family unions, distant expeditions, and even ordinary enterprises, grew upon belated man, as responsibility in any form became a burthen to him. Even civilised men are generally impatient of responsibility, and ready to shift the task of determining their conduct for them to any person capable or bold enough to do it. It is in some such ways as these that old age came to be venerable to primitive man and to obtain his worship. In the worship of old men lies the germ of a priesthood, for priest means old.

Hume writes thus of Fetichism: “There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good to everything that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopaia in poetry, where trees, mountains, and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion."

Although primitive man seems scarcely to have known what abstraction was, in the contemplation of concrete objects he excelled, and such contemplation was necessary to fit him for the later and more difficult processes of abstract reasoning. The language of primitive times is marked by the total absence of abstract and generic terms. But what phenomenon was known was thoroughly known, and very vividly as well as truthfully described. One is often struck with this fact. Phenomena, as personifications, were watched closely and narrowly, and their various guises, disguises, and changes noted and depicted. Primitive man regarded the contemplated object as standing alone-a thing by itself; and his mind imaged with a striking exactness what the

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eye saw. His perceptions were many and sharply defined; but his conceptions were few, half-formed, and unrelated. Observation was to him a constant all-in-all. It stimulated his vigilance and fixed his attention; while to describe what he saw exercised his artistic powers, which were highly developed in Fetichist times, as his hymns, songs, and laments prove, to say nothing of his other æsthetic manifestations. Contemplative Fetichism, as Comte has observed, enabled man to acquire a thorough and exact acquaintance with phenomena, and so to lay the basis upon which all knowledge is built up; phenomena must be known in the concrete before they could be known in the abstract. Empirical observations must be acquired and assimilated before sciences can be formed. All knowledge was primarily feeling or sensation, and our conceptions are merely organised perceptions. By watching children acquiring knowledge through impressions of external objects, it will be seen how the human race acquired it, and how it is it made the same mistakes in confusing the objective with the subjective, and the subjective with the objective. Positivism separates the two domains, and exhibits their true relation and dependence. Man is, and must always be, in subordination to the external order, which he can only modify secondarily; and his true wisdom, unity, and peace consists in his recognising and utilising this fact. Fetichism is a fictitious subjectivity; Positivism is a real subjectivity. The one saw man in the world; the other sees the world in man. There are agreements between these points of view, but there are also profound differences, as has been already stated.

So primitive man regarded himself and the world. The world was hardly to his nascent thought external to him, but as a manifestation of what he was. He regarded himself as one with nature. How long he remained in this state it is impossible to say. We do know that this primitive worship of the things he saw and felt was universal, and, it being so ineradicable, that it must have-if we can with any propriety speak of this phase of Fetichism in the past tense-lasted during many ages, possibly for many thousands of years. Gradually Fetichism became modified into that form known as the worship of ancestors-a worship which was widely diffused and prevailed long. When we open the oldest Aryan Scriptures, the "Rig Veda," we find combined with ancestor worship the worship of what

Professor Wilson calls "Elemental deities;" perhaps astrolatric-fetiches would be a more correct designation. Of this worship Wilson says: "There is no mention of any temple, or any reference to a public place of worship, and it is clear that the worship was entirely domestic." Public worship grew out of private, as the larger aggregates of men grew out of smaller-the clan or tribe out of families, and so on.

Comte says that "the chief imperfection of Fetichism is that not till a late period does it allow the rise of a priesthood qualified to direct man's future progress. The worship of Fetichism, even when highly developed, requires at first no priest. For it is by its nature essentially a private worship; each one may worship without a mediator beings which are almost always within his reach. Ultimately, however, a priesthood arises. This is when the stars, which are long without honour, come to be the principal Fetiches, and, as such, common to vast populations. They are seen to be beyond our reach. Hence a special class is formed, whose duties are to transmit the homage of man, and to interpret the will of the Fetiches. In this, its last stage, Fetichism borders on Polytheism, the origin of which, in all cases, was astrolatry. This is clear from the names of the greater gods, which are always borrowed from the stars most adapted to perpetuate the fictitious synthesis."

Astrolatric Fetichism has prevailed in all countries. Its traces are, or were, more readily perceived in the religions of Peru, Mexico, Japan, and especially in China, where, to this hour, the worship of the visible sky as Tien is carried on. (See Du Halde's "China," 8vo ed., vol. iii.)

To Fetichism succeeds Polytheism. Man's increasing acquaintance with the world leads him gradually to supplant the primitive conceptions he had by those which conformed more to his growing experience. He begins to perceive that the world is external to him, but he cannot yet shake himself free-nor indeed can most of our contemporaries-from his hypothesis of will to account for change and movement. In Polytheism man regards the world as regulated by personal wills, but lessens the number of them. They are not, as in Fetichism, as innumerable as the objects he sees, animate or inanimate. He then regards each class of objects-a great effort of abstraction, as having a particular will guiding and regulating it. There is no longer a god of each grove or stream, tree or cloud,