superstition of the Fetishist consisted only in believing that the
objects which produce the phaenomena of nature involuntarily, produce
them voluntarily. The Fetishist thinks not merely that his Fetish is
alive, but that it can help him in war, can cure him of diseases, can
grant him prosperity, or afflict him with all the contrary evils.
Therein consists the lamentable effect of Fetishism--its degrading and
prostrating influence on the feelings and conduct, its conflict with all
genuine experience, and antagonism to all real knowledge of nature.

M. Comte had also no small sympathy with the Oriental theocracies, as he
calls the sacerdotal castes, who indeed often deserved it by their early
services to intellect and civilization; by the aid they gave to the
establishment of regular government, the valuable though empirical
knowledge they accumulated, and the height to which they helped to carry
some of the useful arts. M. Comte admits that they became oppressive,
and that the prolongation of their ascendancy came to be incompatible
with further improvement. But he ascribes this to their having arrogated
to themselves the temporal government, which, so far as we have any
authentic information, they never did. The reason why the sacerdotal
corporations became oppressive, was because they were organized: because
they attempted the "unity" and "systematization" so dear to M. Comte,
and allowed no science and no speculation, except with their leave and
under their direction. M. Comte's sacerdotal order, which, in his
system, has all the power that ever they had, would be oppressive in the
same manner; with no variation but that which arises from the altered
state of society and of the human mind.

M. Comte's partiality to the theocracies is strikingly contrasted with
his dislike of the Greeks, whom as a people he thoroughly detests, for
their undue addiction to intellectual speculation, and considers to have