Note (return) — COMTE.

Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The principle here laid down as that of fetishism, 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