RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION, 457 



nature-worship. The religion in all these types was the belief and worship not 

 of spirits of any kind, not of any immaterial, imagined being inside things, but 

 of the actual visible things themselves — trees, stones, rivers, mountains, earth, 

 fire, stars, sun, and sky. (P. 498.) 



The attitude of discipleship is not favorable to inquiry ; and, as 

 fanatical Christians show us, inquiry is sometimes thought sinful and 

 likely to bring punishment. I do not suppose that Mr. Harrison's rev- 

 erence for M. Comte has gone this length ; but still it has gone far 

 enough not only to cause his continued adherence to a doctrine espoused 

 by M. Comte which has been disproved, but also to make him tacitly 

 assume that this doctrine is accepted by one whose rejection of it was 

 long ago set forth. In the " Descriptive Sociology " there are classified 

 and tabulated statements concerning some eighty peoples ; and besides 

 these I have had before me masses of facts, since collected, concern- 

 ing many other peoples. An induction based on over a hundred 

 examples, warrants me in saying that there has never existed any- 

 where such a religion as that which Mr. Harrison ascribes to " count- 

 less millions of men " during " countless centuries of time." A chap- 

 ter on " Idol- worship and Fetich-worship " in the " Principles of Soci- 

 ology," gives proof that in the absence of a developed ghost-theory, 

 fetichism is absent. I have shown that, whereas among the lowest 

 races, such as the Juangs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tas- 

 manians, and Bushmen, there is no fetichism ; fetichism reaches its 

 greatest height in considerably-advanced societies, like those of ancient 

 Peru and modern India : in which last place, as Sir Alfred Lyall tells 

 us, "not only does the husbandman pray to his plow, the fisher to 

 his net, the weaver to his loom, but the scribe adores his pen, and the 

 banker his account-books.* And I have remarked that, "had fetich- 

 ism been conspicuous among the lowest races, and inconspicuous among 

 the higher, the statement that it was primordial might have been held 

 proved ; but that as the facts happen to be exactly the opposite, the 

 statement is conclusively disproved." f 



Similarly with Nature- worship : regarding this as being partially 

 distinguished from Fetichism by the relatively imposing character of 

 its objects. In a subsequent chapter I have shown that this also, 

 is an aberrant development of ghost- worship. Among all the many 

 tribes and nations, remote in place and unlike in type, whose super- 

 stitions I have examined, I have found no case in which any great 

 natural appearance or power, feared and propitiated, was not identified 

 with a human or quasi-human personality. I am not aware that Pro- 

 fessor Max MuUer, or any adherent of his, has been able to produce 

 a single case in which there exists worship of the great natural objects 

 themselves, pure and simple — the heavens, the sun, the moon, the 

 dawn, etc. : objects which, according to the mythologists, become 



* " Religion of an Indian Province." f " Principles of Sociology," § 162. 



