5 1 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thereby would be nothing to the tremendous injury to the whole people 

 that would ensue ? Can we increase the prosperity and well-being of 

 a community by putting a penalty on success ? Can a people advance 

 under laws that check enterprise, that put a fine on sagacity, that re- 

 press energy, that destroy the liberty of the individual ? There are 

 possibly some evils that arise from private ownership of land, but 

 the blessings that arise from it are simj)ly incalculable. It is absurd 

 to call it a monopoly ; it is that only in name, in this country at least, 

 where the land is really held by the people, and is always attainable 

 by the people. We are peculiarly a landed democracy. Our farmers, 

 for the most part, cultivate their own acres, and on every hill-side in 

 the country stand innumerable cottages owned by their occupants and 

 earned by labor and self-denial. The ownership of land is one of the 

 greatest stimulants to right-doing that exists : it excites ambition ; it 

 promotes industry ; it induces thrift and abstemious habits ; it is the 

 hope of youth and the pride of age. It is the very essence of wisdom 

 to encourage it. Anarchy is impossible among a people wedded to the 

 land. What if a few persons in the great cities become rich by the 

 increase of the value of land — what is this to the welfare of the millions 

 that have secured small footholds on the earth, and built their roof- 

 trees ? "I tell you what," says a French author, " those old fellows 

 that invented marriage knew what they were about." So also, we may 

 say, did those old fellows that invented private ownership of land. 



FETICHISM OE ANTHKOPOMOKPHISM. 



By GEORGE PELLEW. 



IN the recent controversy between Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison on 

 the subject of the relation between science and religion, the question 

 of the historical priority of fetichism over spiritism or anthropomor- 

 phism was discussed at some length, and was somewhat dogmatically 

 determined in the negative, by Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer, in his last 

 contribution to the general controversy, cited a large number of au- 

 thorities to support the position that all instances of fetichism are to 

 be explained as the results of animism, namely, that a stone or a tree 

 never has become an object of religious worship except as associated 

 in some way with the notion of a ghost or a dream-spirit. The dis- 

 cussion was closed with this statement, and has not since been reopened. 

 It may be, however, of interest to suggest some considerations which 

 tend to show that Mr. Spencer's conclusion on this point was perhaps 

 hasty and subject to revision, and that Mr. Harrison was possibly cor- 

 rect in asserting that the attitude of primitive men toward the universe 

 must be supposed to have been fetichistic rather than anthropomorphic. 

 In attempting to ascertain the probable nature of primitive religion, 



