The attitude of discipleship is not favorable to inquiry; and, as fanatical Christians show us, inquiry is sometimes thought sinful and likely to bring punishment. I do not suppose that Mr. Harrison's reverence for M. Comte has gone this length; but still it has gone far enough not only to cause his continued adherence to a doctrine espoused by M. Comte which has been disproved, but also to make him tacitly assume that this doctrine is accepted by one whose rejection of it was long ago set forth. In the "Descriptive Sociology" there are classified and tabulated statements concerning some eighty peoples; and besides these I have had before me masses of facts, since collected, concerning many other peoples. An induction based on over a hundred examples, warrants me in saying that there has never existed anywhere such a religion as that which Mr. Harrison ascribes to "countless millions of men" during "countless centuries of time." A chapter on "Idol-worship and Fetich-worship "in the "Principles of Sociology," gives proof that in the absence of a developed ghost-theory, fetichism is absent. I have shown that, whereas among the lowest races, such as the Juangs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tasmanians, and Bushmen, there is no fetichism; fetichism reaches its greatest height in considerably-advanced societies, like those of ancient Peru and modern India: in which last place, as Sir Alfred Lyall tells us, "not only does the husbandman pray to his plow, the fisher to his net, the weaver to his loom, but the scribe adores his pen, and the banker his account-books.[1] And I have remarked that, "had fetichism been conspicuous among the lowest races, and inconspicuous among the higher, the statement that it was primordial might have been held proved; but that as the facts happen to be exactly the opposite, the statement is conclusively disproved."[2]
Similarly with Nature-worship: regarding this as being partially distinguished from Fetichism by the relatively imposing character of its objects. In a subsequent chapter I have shown that this also, is an aberrant development of ghost-worship. Among all the many tribes and nations, remote in place and unlike in type, whose superstitions I have examined, I have found no case in which any great natural appearance or power, feared and propitiated, was not identified with a human or quasi-human personality. I am not aware that Professor Max Müller, or any adherent of his, has been able to produce a single case in which there exists worship of the great natural objects themselves, pure and simple—the heavens, the sun, the moon, the dawn, etc.: objects which, according to the mythologists, become
