will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to
comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious
_régime_ to the other."--P. 97.

The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of
generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects,
and classified them into one species, so they approximated the
corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal
Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from
matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became
a god.

"For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a
character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their
indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a
special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less
extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only,
from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary
to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a
chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a
god--that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist,
properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this
would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily
endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the
similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks,
led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what
was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no
longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the