irit, whether that of a
man or of some other being, into any object whatever, which was thereby
invested with beneficent or malignant power. It is easy to show that in
this second stage of fetishism, which some have believed to be the
primitive form of myth, there would be no further progress in the
mythical elaboration of spirits, their mode of life, their influence and
possible transmigrations. This elaboration is indeed a product of the
mythical faculty, but in a rational order; it is a logical process,
mythical in substance, but purely reflective in form. For which reason
it was impossible for animals to attain to this stage.

Some peoples remained in this phase of belief, while others advanced to
the ulterior and polytheistic form. This may also be divided into two
classes; those who classify and ultimately reduce fetishes into a more
general conception, and those whose conception takes an anthropomorphic
form. Let us examine the genesis of both classes.

When the popular belief in spirits had free development, the number of
spirits and powers was countless, as many examples show. To give a
single instance--the Australians hold that there is an innumerable
multitude of spirits; the heavens, the earth, every nook, grove, bush,
spring, crag, and stone are peopled with them. In the same way, some
American tribes suppose the visible and invisible world to be filled
with good and evil spirits; so do the Khonds, the Negroes of New Guinea,
and, as Castren tells us, the Turanian tribes of Asia and Europe.
Consequently, fetishes, which are the incarnation of these spirits in
some object, animate or inanimate, natural or artificial, are
innumerable, since primitive man and modern savages have created such
fetishes, either at their own pleasure or with the aid of their priests,
magicians, and sorcerers.

Man's co-ordinating faculty, in those races which are capable of
progressive evolution, does not stop short at this inorganic
disintegration of things; he begins a process of classification and, at
the same time, of reduction, by which the numerous fetishes are, by
their natural points of likeness and unlikeness in character and form,
reduced to types and classes, which, as we have already shown, comprise
in themselves the qualities of all the particular objects of the same
species which are diffused throughout nature.

By this spontaneous process of human thought, due to the innate power of
reasoning, man has gradually r