es of all sorts of men, in all ages, and all conditions of
public opinion. 'Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each
other, bring the same reports from various quarters of the globe,'
wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors, merchants, missionaries,
describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard of, such institutions
as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence is so strong,
because the witnesses are so astonished. They do not know that any one
but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before their eyes.
And when Mr. Mueller tries to make the testimony about savage faith
still more untrustworthy, by talking of the 'absence of recognised
authority among savages,' do not let us forget that custom (~nomos~)
is a recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is
inflicted for transgression of certain rules. These rules generally
speaking, are of a religious nature, and the religion to which they
testify is of the sort known (too vaguely) as 'fetichistic.' Let us
keep steadily before our minds, when people talk of lack of evidence,
that we have two of the strongest sorts of evidence in the world for
the kind of religion which least suits Mr. Mueller's argument--(1) the
undesigned coincidences of testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and
sanction of elementary criminal law. Mr. Mueller's own evidence is that
much-disputed work, where 'all men see what they want to see, as in
the clouds,' and where many see systematised fetichism--the Veda.[198]

The first step in Mr. Max Mueller's polemic was the assertion that
Fetichism is nowhere unmixed. We have seen that the fact is capable of
an interpretation that will suit either side. Stages of culture
overlap each other. The second step in his polemic was the effort to
damage the evidence. We have seen that we have as good evidence as can
be desired. In the third place he asks, What are the antecedents of
fetich-worship? He appears to conceive himself to be arguing with
persons (p. 127) who 'have taken for granted that every human being
was miraculously endowed with the concept of what forms the predicate
of every fetich, call it power, spirit, or god.' If there are
reasoners so feeble, they must be left to the punishment inflicted by
Mr. Mueller. On the other hand, students who regard the growth of the
idea of power, which is the predicate of every fetich, as a slow
process, as the result of various impressions and trains of early
half-conscious reasonin