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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843 by Various
page 322 of 328 (98%)
shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.

We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we
must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind,
he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that
primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which _things themselves_
were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a
life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.

"Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology
eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly
embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive
mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been
confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied
the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to
the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would,
no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present
day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we
are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a
difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to
retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential
characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of
the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily
ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a
vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the
essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not
familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to
exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the
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