lves are able to tell us. . . . ' Yes, we
_must_ learn and accept it; so I have always urged. But if the savages
tell us about totems, are they not then 'casual native informants'? If a
Maori tells you, as he does, of traditional hymns containing ideas worthy
of Heraclitus, is _that_ quite trustworthy; whereas, if he tells you
about his idols and taboos, _that_ cannot possibly be worthy of
attention?

Perception of the Infinite

From these extraordinary examples of abstract thought in savages, our
author goes on to say that his theory of 'the perception of the Infinite'
as the origin of religion was received 'with a storm of unfounded
obloquy' (i. 292). I myself criticised the Hibbert Lectures, in Mind;
{116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find,
however, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the
primitiveness of contemporary savages.

In that essay, which, of course, our author had no reason to read, much
was said about fetishism, a topic discussed by Mr. Max Muller in his
Hibbert Lectures. Fetishism is, as he says, an ill word, and has caused
much confusion.

Fetishism and Anthropological Method

Throughout much of his work our author's object is to invalidate the
anthropological method. That method sets side by side the customs,
ideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different races. Of
their _languages_ it does not necessarily take account in this process.
Nobody (as we shall see) knows the languages of all, or of most, of the
races whose ideas he compares. Now the learned professor establishes the
'harm done' by our method in a given instance. He seems to think that,
if a method has been misapplied, therefore the method itself is
necessarily erroneous. The case stands thus: De Brosses {117a} first
compared 'the so-called fetishes' of the Gold Coast with Greek and Roman
amulets and other material objects of old religions. But he did this, we
learn, without trying to find out _why_ a negro made a fetish of a
pebble, shell, or tiger's tail, and without endeavouring to discover
whether the negro's motives really were the motives of his 'postulated
fetish worship' in Greece, Rome, or Palestine.

Origin of Fetishes

If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President. But how does the
unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern
anthropologist? Do _we_ not try to find out, and really succeed
sometimes in finding out,