FETICHISM OR ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 515 



no dii'ect evidence, of course, is attainable. Man is now supposed to 

 have existed upon the earth for perhaps more than fifty thousand years, 

 and the earliest or most rudimentary beliefs known to have existed in 

 historical times can be regarded only as survivals of thought in no 

 respect necessarily primitive. 



Arguments from the probable course of evolution, and various in- 

 direct arguments from analogy and from the application of ordinary 

 common sense, furnish all the light that is possible on this question. 



The simplest and most permanent element of religion in general is 

 admitted to be a vague sense of wonder and awe in the presence of the 

 external universe. Emotions of wonder and awe depend upon a con- 

 sciousness of something mysterious or unexplained, and a conscious- 

 ness of the lack of explanation can not arise until some perception has 

 been gained of the relation of cause and effect. 



The processes of evolution have been continuous, according to Mr. 

 Spencer and modern men of science, from the inanimate world to man, 

 or, at any rate, from the first speck of protoplasm that appeared on the 

 earth's surface. With the first emergence of conscious perception on 

 the earth of cause and effect, that is, practically, with the rise of reason 

 as distinguished from instinct, must be placed the first beginning of 

 the qualities or habits of thought or feeling that in time became re- 

 ligion. In an interesting essay on " Fetichism in Animals," Mr. Ro- 

 manes has collected several instances of a sense of the mysterious, ac- 

 companied by wonder and awe or alarm in the higher animals. Of a 

 like nature is the terror of a horse at the first sight of a steam-engine, 

 of a dog at a person who makes unaccountable grimaces at it, and of 

 most animals at the sound of thunder. 



The sense of the mysterious, combined with instinctive or even 

 conscious wonder and terror at unaccountable phenomena, can not, 

 however, in itself be said to constitute religion. It is an element, but 

 only one element, of religion. Even a sense of entire dependence upon 

 external or higher powers would not, as Canon Liddon well said, be 

 sufficient. "What is this power? That is a question which must be 

 answered before feeling can determine its complexion."* The power 

 to ask, much more the power to devise some answer to such a question 

 as this, belongs clearly to a much later stage of evolution than does 

 the simple perception of cause and effect that gives rise, as has been 

 seen, to a sense of the mysterious. Phenomena must have been 

 vaguely felt and contemplated, and from time to time wondered at, 

 long before curiosity would be excited as to their nature ; primitive 

 savages would for ages observe natural movements without much in- 

 tellectual curiosity, simply observing that the sun and moon moved, 

 and animals and other things moved, without asking why they moved, 

 but merely noticing and recording the fact of their motion. 



The sense of the mysterious, which is one chief element of religion, 

 * H. P. Liddon, " Some Elements of Religion," London, 1873, p. 11. 



