“Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent and difficulty.  The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance—­an importance extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I shall explain in its place.  When we reflect that fetishism supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious regime to the other.”—­P. 97.

The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects, and classified them into one species, so they approximated the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became a god.

“For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their indeterminate residence.  They, each of them, administer a special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only, from which it is inseparable.  Now, in proportion as the resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a god—­that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible, whose residence is not rigorously fixed.  There could not exist, properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily endowed with a material individuality.  When, for example, the similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks, led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what was common in these objects, this abstract being could no longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the forest.”—­P. 101.

This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is utterly uncalled for.  The same uncultured imagination that could animate a tree, could people the air with gods.  Whenever the cause of any natural event is invisible, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism; it must create some being to produce it.  If thunder is to be theologically explained—­and there is no event in nature more likely to suggest such explanation—­the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it must create some being that thunders.  No one, the discipline of whose mind had not been solely and purely scientific, would have created for itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]