s these opinions. If fetichism
be indeed one of the earliest factors of faith in the supernatural; if
it be, in its rudest forms, most powerful in proportion to other
elements of faith among the least cultivated races (and _that_ Mr.
Mueller will probably allow)--among what class of cultivated peoples
will it longest hold its ground? Clearly, among the least cultivated,
among the fishermen, the shepherds of lonely districts, the peasants
of outlying lands--in short, among the _people_. Neglected by sacred
poets in the culminating period of purity in religion, it will linger
among the superstitions of the rustics. There is no real break in the
continuity of peasant life; the modern folklore is (in many points)
the savage ritual. Now Mr. Mueller, when he was minimising the
existence of fetichism in the Rig Veda (the oldest collection of
hymns), admitted its existence in the Atharva_n_a (p. 60).[205] On p.
151, we read 'the Atharva-veda-Sanhita is a later collection,
containing, besides a large number of Rig Veda verses, _some curious
relics of popular poetry connected with charms, imprecations, and
other superstitious usages_.' The italics are mine, and are meant to
emphasise this fact:--When we leave the sages, the Rishis, and look at
what is _popular_, look at what that class believed which of savage
practice has everywhere retained so much, we are at once among the
charms and the fetiches! This is precisely what one would have
expected. If the history of religion and of mythology is to be
unravelled, we must examine what the unprogressive classes in Europe
have in common with Australians and Bushmen, and Andaman Islanders. It
is the function of the people to retain in folklore these elements of
religion, which it is the high duty of the sage and the poet to purify
away in the fire of refining thought. It is for this very reason that
_ritual_ has (though Mr. Max Mueller curiously says that it seems not
to possess) an immense scientific interest. Ritual holds on, with the
tenacity of superstition, to all that has ever been practised. Yet,
when Mr. Mueller wants to know about _origins_, about actual ancient
_practice_, he deliberately turns to that 'great collection of ancient
poetry' (the Rig Veda) 'which has no special reference to sacrificial
acts,' not to the Brahmanas which are full of ritual.

To sum up briefly:--(1) Mr. Mueller's arguments against the evidence
for, and the primitiveness of, fetichism seem to demons