is important in many respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application; but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst rude thinkers—­we do not find any condition of mankind which displays that complete ascendancy of the principle here described.  Our author would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly a species of explanation of natural phenomena.  The accounts we have of fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with a desire to explain their phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied relation between those objects and the human being.  The charm or the amulet—­some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases, or bring good-luck—­grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of granting his prayer.[50]

[50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism in Africa.  It is the best which just now falls under our hand, and perhaps a longer search would not find a better.  Those only who never read The Doctor, will be surprised to find it quoted on a grave occasion:—­

“The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, feitico; the vernacular name is Bossum, or Bossifoe.  Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village, every family, and every individual.  A great hill, a rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish.  The king’s is usually the largest tree in his country.  They who choose or change one, take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless—­a stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance, and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal.  The ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling them with the water.  He has thus a household or personal god, in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and with as much reason.  Barbot says that some of the Europeans on that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this superstition, but believed in it, and practised it themselves.”—­Vol.  V. p. 136.

We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating the impracticable unmanageable nature of our author’s generalizations when historically applied.  Having advanced to this stage in the development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such scientific precision, fixed it.