aze 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