and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The
ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his
family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling
them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and
with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on
that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this
superstition, but believed in it, and practised it
themselves."--Vol. V. p. 136.

We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating
the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author's generalizations
when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the
development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to
extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such
scientific precision, fixed it.

"Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the
religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the
most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at
present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent
and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a
less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the
more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has
naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance--an importance
extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I
shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism
supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being
truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an
inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary