evidence about savage practice is derived from the ‘undesigned coincidence’ of the testimonies of all sorts of men, in all ages, and all conditions of public opinion.  ’Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports from various quarters of the globe,’ wrote Millar of Glasgow.  When sailors, merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard of, such institutions as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence is so strong, because the witnesses are so astonished.  They do not know that anyone but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before their eyes.  And when Mr. Muller tries to make the testimony about savage faith still more untrustworthy, by talking of the ’absence of recognised authority among savages,’ do not let us forget that custom ([Greek]) is a recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is inflicted for transgression of certain rules.  These rules, generally speaking, are of a religious nature, and the religion to which they testify is of the sort known (too vaguely) as ‘fetichistic.’  Let us keep steadily before our minds, when people talk of lack of evidence, that we have two of the strongest sorts of evidence in the world for the kind of religion which least suits Mr. Muller’s argument—­(1) the undesigned coincidences of testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and sanction of elementary criminal law.  Mr. Muller’s own evidence is that much-disputed work, where ‘all men see what they want to see, as in the clouds,’ and where many see systematised fetichism—­the Veda. {222}

The first step in Mr. Max Muller’s polemic was the assertion that Fetichism is nowhere unmixed.  We have seen that the fact is capable of an interpretation that will suit either side.  Stages of culture overlap each other.  The second step in his polemic was the effort to damage the evidence.  We have seen that we have as good evidence as can be desired.  In the third place he asks, What are the antecedents of fetich-worship?  He appears to conceive himself to be arguing with persons (p. 127) who ’have taken for granted that every human being was miraculously endowed with the concept of what forms the predicate of every fetich, call it power, spirit, or god.’  If there are reasoners so feeble, they must be left to the punishment inflicted by Mr. Muller.  On the other hand, students who regard the growth of the idea of power, which is the predicate of every fetish, as a slow process, as the result of various impressions and trains of early half-conscious reasoning, cannot be disposed of by the charge that they think that ’every human being was miraculously endowed’ with any concept whatever.  They, at least, will agree with Mr. Max Muller that there are fetiches and fetiches, that to one reverence is assigned for one reason, to another for another.  Unfortunately, it is less easy to admit that Mr. Max Muller has been happy in his choice of ancient instances.  He writes (p. 99):  ’Sometimes a stock or a