pped by the negroes of the West
Coast of Africa. De Brosses, a French savant of last century, brought
the word fetishism into use as a term for the type of religion of the
lowest races. The word has given rise to some confusion, having been
applied by Comte and other writers to the worship of the heavenly
bodies and of the great features of nature. It is best to limit it,
as has been done above, to the worship of such natural objects as are
reverenced not for their own power or excellence but because they are
supposed to be occupied each by a spirit.

Can this be called religion? In the full sense of the term it cannot.
We should remember that it is not the casual object, but the spirit
connected with it that the savage worships; but even then we shall be
obliged to hold that the fetish worshipper is rather seeking after
religion than actually in possession of it.

4. A Supreme Being.--Is it necessary to add another class of deity to
these three, and to say that besides nature-gods and spirits early
man also worshipped a Supreme Being above all these? In most savage
religions there is a principal deity to whom the others are
subordinate. But if we carefully examine one by one the supreme gods
of these religions, we shall find reason to doubt whether they really
have a common character so as to form a class by themselves. Many of
them are nature gods who have outgrown the other deities of that
class and come to occupy an isolated position. The North American
Indians, as we saw, worship the Great Spirit, the heaven with its
breath, to whom sun and moon and other ordinances of nature act as
ministers. In many cases heaven is the highest god. In others again
the sun is supreme. Ukko the great god of the Finns is a heaven- and
rain-god. Perkunas the god of the Lithuanians is connected with
thunder. On the other hand there are instances in which the supreme
god appears to be a different being from the nature-god. The
Samoyedes worship the sun and moon and the spirits of other parts of
nature; but they also believe in a good spirit who is above all. The
Supreme Being of the islands of the Pacific bears in New Zealand the
name of Tangaroa, and is spoken of in quite metaphysical terms as the
uncreated and eternal Creator. Here we may suspect Christian
influence. With the Zulus Unkulunkulu the Old-old one might be
supposed to be a kind of first cause. But on looking nearer we find
he is distinctly a man, the first man, the comm