discovery, which bids so fair both to immortalize its
author and to enlighten the world? It is stated briefly in the _first_,
and illustrated at greater length in the _fourth_ and following volumes
of his work. The general outline of his theory is thus sketched: "That
law consists in this,--that each one of our leading conceptions, every
branch of our knowledge, passes successively through _three different
theoretic states_: the state theological or fictitious, the state
metaphysical or abstract, and the state scientific or positive. In other
words, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of
its researches, three methods of philosophizing, whose character is
essentially different, and even _radically opposed_: first, the
Theological method; then, the Metaphysical; and, last of all, the
Positive. Hence three systems of Philosophies, which _mutually exclude
each other_. The first is the necessary starting-point of the human
mind; the third is its fixed, ultimate state; the second is purely
provisional, and destined merely to serve as an intermediate stage."[58]

These are the _three_ great stages through which the collective mind of
Humanity must necessarily pass in its progressive advancement towards a
perfect knowledge of truth; but of these three, the _first_, or the
Theological Epoch, is again subdivided, and exhibited as commencing with
Fetishism, then advancing to Polytheism, and finally consummated in
Monotheism.

FETISHISM is supposed to have been the first form of the Theological
Philosophy; and it is described as consisting in the ascription of a
life and intelligence essentially analogous to our own to every existing
object, of whatever kind, whether organic or inorganic, natural or
artificial. It is traced to a primitive tendency, supposed to exist
equally in man and in the lower animals, to conceive of all external
objects as animated, and to ascribe to them the same, or similar, powers
and feelings with those which belong to the living tribes
themselves.[59] "Let an infant, for example, or a savage, on the one
hand, and, on the other hand, a dog or a monkey, behold a watch for the
first time, there will doubtless be no immediate profound difference,
unless in respect to the manner of representing it, between the
spontaneous conception which will represent to the one and the other
that admirable product of human industry as a sort of veritable animal,
having its own peculiar tastes and