HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 169 



fetishes, either at their own pleasure or with the aid 

 of their priests, magicians, and sorcerers. 



Man's co-ordinating faculty, in those races 

 which are capable of progressive evolution, does 

 not stop short at this inorganic disintegration of 

 things ; he begins a process of classification and, at 

 the same time, of reduction, by which the numerous 

 fetishes are, by their natural points of likeness and 

 unlikeness in character and form, reduced to types 

 and classes, which, as we have already shown, 

 comprise in themselves the qualities of all the par- 

 ticular objects of the same species which are diffused 

 throughout nature. 



By this spontaneous process of human thought, 

 due to the innate power of reasoning, man has 

 gradually reduced the chaos of special fetishes to a 

 tolerably systematic order, and he then goes on to 

 more precise simplification. Let us try to trace in 

 this historic fact the classifying process at the 

 moment when the first form of polytheism succeeds 

 to irregular and anarchical fetishism. 



In the Samoan islands, a local god is wont to 

 appear in the form of an owl, and the accidental 

 discovery of a dead owl would be deplored, and its 

 body would be buried with solemn rites. The death 

 of this particular bird does not, however, imply the 

 death of the god himself, since the people believe 

 him to be incarnated in the whole species. In this 

 fact we see that a special fetish is developed into a 



