cent 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
_regime_ 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