This is Polytheism. We are not aware that in
any tribe of savages or negroes who have been observed, Fetichism has
been found totally unmixed with Polytheism, and it is probable that the
two coexisted from the earliest period at which the human mind was
capable of forming objects into classes. Fetichism proper gradually
becomes limited to objects possessing a marked individuality. A
particular mountain or river is worshipped bodily (as it is even now by
the Hindoos and the South Sea Islanders) as a divinity in itself, not
the mere residence of one, long after invisible gods have been imagined
as rulers of all the great classes of phaenomena, even intellectual and
moral, as war, love, wisdom, beauty, &c. The worship of the earth
(Tellus or Pales) and of the various heavenly bodies, was prolonged into
the heart of Polytheism. Every scholar knows, though _litterateurs_ and
men of the world do not, that in the full vigour of the Greek religion,
the Sun and Moon, not a god and goddess thereof, were sacrificed to as
deities--older deities than Zeus and his descendants, belonging to the
earlier dynasty of the Titans (which was the mythical version of the
fact that their worship was older), and these deities had a distinct set
of fables or legends connected with them.
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