Doubtless the purest aesthetic sentiment was gratified in the productions of the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was at its highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment.  At the same time, for the great majority of peoples in early and subsequent ages down to our own time, there was and is the consciousness of a numen, in the proper meaning of the word, within the statue or effigy, and these were unconsciously entified by the same law which leads to the entification of natural phenomena; the august presence of the gods and an artificial symbol of the living organism of the world were contained in the material form.  While this sentiment took a higher development in art, and was gradually emancipated from its mythical bonds, it never altogether disappeared in artistic creations; and there are still many who would, like some uncultured peoples of early and modern times, cover up their images when they are about to commit some action which might be displeasing to these idols of the gods or saints.  If we were to gauge the sentiments which really animate a man of the people, even when he; looks at the statue of a great man, we should find that in addition to his aesthetic satisfaction, he unconsciously imagines that the spirit of the dead man is infused into the image and is able to enjoy the admiration of the observers.

The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded on this belief in the incarnation of spirits and the numen of fetishes.  There is indeed no real difference between the superstitious adoration of a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in many religions of modern civilization.  Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image.  The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and gris-gris of savages.  This fetishtic and idolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development been infused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hung on plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbol of perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills.  We have analogous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or the words of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn round the neck.  The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lamps kept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help and favour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thus transforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous or civilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, for instance, and some other American peoples regarded the number “four” as sacred.