434 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



objects possessing magical properties, half amulet, half idol, which 

 play a large part in the religion of the West African negroes. Still 

 farther extended to the worship of material objects in general, 

 sometimes including even the heavenly bodies, "fetishism" became 

 a formula in which many writers of the last century thought that the 

 origin of religion had been found. 



The position of the history of religions in Germany at the be- 

 ginning of the nineteenth century is best represented by Creuzer's 

 Symbolik and Myihologie der Alien Volker. 1 The successive editions 

 of this work, the French translation and adaptation by Guigniaut, 2 

 and the writings of Creuzer's disciples among whom F. C. Baur is 

 numbered 3 may be said to record the history of the subject 

 through the first half of the century. The discredit into which 

 Creuzer's theory of "symbolism" has fallen, in consequence partly 

 of the contemporary criticism of Lobeck 4 and others, partly of the 

 general progress of the study, should not lead us to ignore the fact 

 that his volumes furnished a useful and comprehensive collection of 

 what was then known about the principal religions of the world; 

 while of the theory itself it has been justly said that it had at least 

 the merit of recognizing that mythology is a product of religion, 

 not merely a play of poetic fancy. 



Reviewing from our own point of view these earlier essays, we can 

 see that the treatment of the history of religions suffered, like all 

 other branches of historical research, from the striking lack of the 

 historic sense which characterized the age of " Aufklarung," and 

 from the alternative attitude of credulity or skepticism toward the 

 sources which could be overcome only by the establishment of the 

 principles of historical criticism; while peculiar hindrances existed in 

 religious prepossessions. So long as Christian writers regarded all 

 the religions of the world except Judaism a'nd Christianity as sinful 

 aberrations from a primitive revelation, and freethinkers conceived 

 of all existing religions, including Christianity, as corruptions, under 

 the hand of self-seeking priests, of a pure "natural religion," no 

 true understanding of the phenomena was possible. The way to 

 progress was opened by a sounder conception of the nature of history 



1 Creuzer, Fr., Symbolik und Mythologie der Alien Volker, 1810-12; 2d ed. 

 1819-23, 6 vols. with Atlas; 3d ed. 1837-42, 4 vols 



2 Guigniaut, J. D., Les Religions de VAntiquite, Paris, 1825-41, 10 vols, 8. 



8 Baur, F. 0., Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des AUerthums, 

 1824-25, 3 vols. 



Of the numerous other works of the first half of the nineteenth century mav 

 be named, Meiners, C., Allgemeine kritische Geschicfite der Religionen, 1806-07, 

 2 vols.; Constant, B., De la Religion considcree dans sa Source, ses Formes, et ses 

 Dfveloppcments, 182434, 5 vols ; Schwenck, Konrad, Mythologie der Griechen, 

 Rdmer, Aegypter, Semiten. Perser, Germanen und Sloven, 2d ed. 1855, 7 vols. 

 (1st ed. under a somewhat different title, 184353); Eckermann, K., Lehrbuch der 

 Religionsgeschichte und Mythologie, 1845-1848, 4 vols. 



4 Lobeck, Chr. A., Agiaophamus, sive de theoJogiae mysticae Graecorum causis, 

 1829. 



