inclinations; whence results,
consequentially, in this respect, a Fetishism fundamentally common to
both, the former only having the exclusive privilege of being able
ultimately to get out of it." This instinctive and spontaneous
belief--the natural, and, indeed, the necessary result of a tendency
inherent in living beings--is conceived to have been an indispensable
and a most useful provision for the primeval state of man, and to have
exerted a highly salutary influence on the progressive development of
human thought. It is contrasted with the subsequent but more advanced
stage of Polytheism;[60] and the latter is held to denote a spontaneous
belief in supernatural beings, distinct from and even independent of
matter, since it is passively subject to their will; while the former
considers matter itself as animated, and has no idea of any higher or
more spiritual form of being. It is further supposed that idolatry,
properly so called, belongs to Fetishism only, and not at all to
Polytheism, for this singular, but not very conclusive reason, among
others, that if Polytheism be justly chargeable with idolatry because it
recognizes many wills superior to Nature and having power over it,
Catholicism would be equally liable to the same charge in respect of the
homage which it renders to saints and angels![61]

But Fetishism is only the initial step in the process of our
intellectual development; and it passes into Polytheism, not suddenly
and _per salium_, but slowly and gradually, through the intermediate
stage of "_Astrolatrie_," or the worship of the heavenly bodies. The
mind is imperceptibly divested of the idea that everything around it is
animated, and, by a process of real, but as yet imperfect
generalization, it rises from Fetishism to Polytheism; in which latter
system of belief an order of powers superior to Nature is recognized,
while as yet there is no conception of a supreme and all-perfect Mind.
The Polytheistic system, which prevailed so universally in the ancient
world, and which still prevails among Heathen nations, is supposed to
have been, not a _declension_ from a purer and better state, not a
_corruption_ either of natural or revealed religion, but _a step in
advance_ of the primary faith of mankind, a result of growing
intelligence, a vast and most beneficial change in the right direction.
It was the first great product of the metaphysical spirit, the result of
an early but imperfect generalization; it