rts 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 anyone but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before
their eyes. And when Mr. Muller 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 ([Greek]) 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. Muller's argument--(1) the undesigned coincidences of
testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and sanction of elementary
criminal law. Mr. Muller'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. {222}

The first step in Mr. Max Muller'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. Muller. On the other hand,
students who regard the growth of the idea of power, which is the
predicate of every fetish, as a slow process, as the result of various
impressions and trains of early half-conscious reasoning, c