consciousness is still in the arms of rude, savage life, where sensation prevails over reflection. It is a deification of Nature, “All is God, but God himself.” It loses the Infinite in the finite; worships the creature more than the Creator. Its lowest form—for in this lowest deep there is a lower deep—is the worship of beasts; the highest the sublime, but deceitful, reverence which the old Sabæan paid the host of Heaven, or which some Grecian or Indian philosopher offered to the Universe personified, and called Pan, or Brahma. Then all the mass of created things was a Fetiche. God was worshipped in a sublime and devout, but bewildering, Pantheism. He was not considered as distinct from the Universe. Pantheism and Fetichism are nearly allied.[1]
In the lowest form of this worship, so far as we can gather from the savage tribes, each individual has his own peculiar Fetiche, a beast, an image, a stone, a mountain, or a star, a concrete and visible type of God. For it seems in this state that all, or most, external things, are supposed to have a life analogous in kind to ours, but more or less intense in degree. The concrete form is but the veil of God, like that before Isis in Egypt. There are no priests, for each man has access to his own Deity at will. Worship and prayer are personal, and without mediators. The age of the priesthood, as a distinct class, has not come. Worship is entirely free; there is no rite, estab-
- ↑
In consequence of the opinion in fetichistic nations, that external
things have a mysterious life, M. Comte, ubi supra, Vol. V. p. 36, et seq., discovers
traces of it in animals. When a savage, a child, or a dog, first hears a watch
tick, each supposes it endowed with life, “whence results, by natural
consequence, a Fetichism, which, at bottom, is common to all three!” Here he
confounds the sign with the cause.
Pliny has a curious passage in which he ascribes to the Elephant Æquitas, Religio quoque Siderum; Solisque ac Lunæ Veneratio. Nat. Hist. Lib. VIII. ch. 1. The notion that beasts bad a moral sense appears frequently among the ancients. Ulpian says jus naturale is common to all animals. Origen says that Celsus taught that there was no difference between the Soul of a man and that of Emmets, Bees, &c., Lib. II, Cels. Cont. Clement of Alex. (Stromt. VI. 14, p. 705, 706, ed. Potter) says God gave the Heathen the sun, moon, and stars, that they might worship them, such worship being the way to that of God himself. Perhaps he was led to this opinion by following the LXX. in Deut. iv. 19.
Fetichism continued in Europe long after the introduction of Christianity. The councils of the Church forbid its various forms in numerous decrees, e. g. C. Turg. II. Can. 22; C. Autoisiod. Can. 1. 4; C. Quinisext. Can. 62, 65, 79; Narbon. Can. 15; C. Rothomag. Can. 4, 14. See in Stäudlin, Gesch. Theol. Vol. III. 371, et seq.
