RELIGIONS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 433 



information about the beliefs and customs of many races. A keen 

 interest was thus aroused in the religions of the world, and in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many comprehensive works 

 upon the subject were written, some of them on a large scale. Most 

 of these are descriptive rather than properly historical, but the 

 name " History of Religions," implying at least an apprehension of 

 the true nature of the task, became common toward the end of the 

 eighteenth century. 1 



The question of the origin of the heathen religions was also dis- 

 cussed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the prevailing 

 opinion being that the worship of the heavenly bodies was the earliest 

 form of " idolatry" a theory which had been inherited from the 

 last ages of classical paganism itself. Voltaire touched with a keen 

 observation the improbability of this theory; both he and Fontenelle 

 made some sensible and strikingly modern remarks on the subject, 

 which passed unheeded. Dupuis's Origines de Tons les Cultes, which 

 we may take as marking the close of this period, is a learned and 

 thoroughgoing attempt to trace all religions and mythologies, in- 

 cluding Judaism and Christianity, to one source, Egyptian sun- 

 worship. 2 



The astral theory of religion was not, however, in undisputed 

 possession of the field at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

 Its ancient rival, Euhemerism, still had its adherents, 3 and a new 

 and formidable competitor had appeared. De Brosses, in his Culte 

 des Dieux Fetiches,* turned from interpretations of poetical mythology 

 to the investigation of the religions of living races in a state of 

 savagery, and showed how irrational phenomena in higher religions, 

 such as the worship of living animals in ancient Egypt, might be 

 explained by the beliefs and customs of modern African tribes. 

 Upon the lowest plane "of culture men worship, not the heavenly 

 bodies, but chance stocks and stones, rocks of strange shape or color, 

 trees, animals, all of which De Brosses comprised under the term 

 "fetish," originally applied by the Portuguese to the rude artificial 



1 Among the earliest comprehensive attempts was Alexander Ross, Tlaixrepf ia, 

 or View of all the Religions of the World . . . from the Creation to these Times, 

 London, 1652. This work had an extraordinary success; a second edition appeared 

 in 1655, a third in 1658; and within ten years it had been translated into Dutch, 

 German, and French. Of the works of the eighteenth century it may suffice to 

 name here the large and splendidly illustrated Ceremonies et Coutumes Religieuses 

 de tons les Peuples du Monde, Amsterdam, 1723-37, 7 vols. fol., afterwards 

 enlarged to 10; sumptuously reprinted, Paris, 1807-10, in 11 vols. The engravings 

 are by Bernard Picart, the (anonymous) text by J. F. Bernard and others. 



2 Dupuis, C. F., Origines de Tons ks Cultes, ou Religion Universelle, Paris, 

 1794, 3 vols. 4, with a supplementary volume of plates; also in 10 vols. 8. 



3 The most important work of this school in the eighteenth century was that 

 of Banier, A.., La Mythologie et les Fables expliquees par I'Histoire, Paris, 1738-40, 

 3 vols. 4; 2d ed. Paris, 1748, 8 vols. 8; English translation, The Mythology and. 

 Fables of the Ancients explained from History, London, 1739-40, 4 vols. 8. 



4 De Brosses, C. F., Du Culte des Dieux Fetiches, ou ParaUele de lAncienne 

 Religion de I'Egypte avec la Religion Actuelle de Nigritie, 1760, 12. 



