to cover up decently its rude shapes, as the unhewn stone was concealed in the fane of Apollo of Delos?  If the race whose noblest and oldest extant hymns were pure, exhibits traces of fetichism in its later documents, may not that as easily result from a recrudescence as from a corruption?  Professor Max Muller has still, moreover, to explain how the process of corruption which introduced the same fetichistic practices among Samoyeds, Brazilians, Kaffirs, and the people of the Atharvana Veda came to be everywhere identical in its results.

Here an argument often urged against the anthropological method may be shortly disposed of.  ‘You examine savages,’ people say, ’but how do you know that these savages were not once much more cultivated; that their whole mode of life, religion and all, is not debased and decadent from an earlier standard?’ Mr. Muller glances at this argument, which, however, cannot serve his purpose.  Mr. Muller has recognised that savage, or ‘nomadic,’ languages represent a much earlier state of language than anything that we find, for example, in the oldest Hebrew or Sanskrit texts.  ‘For this reason,’ he says, {218} ’the study of what I call nomad languages, as distinguished from State languages, becomes so instructive.  We see in them what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew.  We watch the childhood of language with all its childish freaks.’  Yes, adds the anthropologist, and for this reason the study of savage religions, as distinguished from State religions, becomes so instructive.  We see in them what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew faiths.  We watch the childhood of religion with all its childish freaks.  If this reasoning be sound when the Kaffir tongue is contrasted with ancient Sanskrit, it should be sound when the Kaffir faith is compared with the Vedic faith.  By parity of reasoning, the religious beliefs of peoples as much less advanced than the Kaffirs as the Kaffirs are less advanced than the Vedic peoples, should be still nearer the infancy of faith, still ‘nearer the beginning.’

We have been occupied, perhaps, too long with De Brosses and our apology for De Brosses.  Let us now examine, as shortly as possible, Mr. Max Muller’s reasons for denying that fetichism is ’a primitive form of religion.’  The negative side of his argument being thus disposed of, it will then be our business to consider (1) his psychological theory of the subjective element in religion, and (2) his account of the growth of Indian religion.  The conclusion of the essay will be concerned with demonstrating that Mr. Max Muller’s system assigns little or no place to the superstitious beliefs without which, in other countries than India, society could not have come into organised existence.

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