his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of
granting his prayer.[50]

[50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism
in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand,
and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only
who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it
quoted on a grave occasion:--

"The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is
known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for
witchcraft, _feitico_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or
_Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every
village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a
rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree,
is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the
largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one,
take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless--a
stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the
worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
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 re