But though the regime of
abstractions was in strictness compatible with Polytheism, it demanded
Monotheism as the condition of its free development. The received
Polytheism being only the first remove from Fetichism, its gods were too
closely mixed up in the daily details of phaenomena, and the habit of
propitiating them and ascertaining their will before any important
action of life was too inveterate, to admit, without the strongest shock
to the received system, the notion that they did not habitually rule by
special interpositions, but left phaenomena in all ordinary cases to the
operation of the essences or peculiar natures which they had first
implanted in them. Any modification of Polytheism which would have made
it fully compatible with the Metaphysical conception of the world, would
have been more difficult to effect than the transition to Monotheism, as
Monotheism was at first conceived.
We have given, in our own way, and at some length, this important
portion of M. Comte's view of the evolution of human thought, as a
sample of the manner in which his theory corresponds with and interprets
historical facts, and also to obviate some objections to it, grounded on
an imperfect comprehension, or rather on a mere first glance.
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