[78] This was perceived by the President de Brosses, a _savant_ with few advantages but a bold and inquiring spirit, to whom the language is indebted for the use of the term _fetishism_ as a name for a definite state of religious conception. We can still read with interest the book which he published anonymously in 1760, under the title: _Du Culte des Dieux fétiches; ou, Parallèle de l'Ancienne Religion de l'Égypte avec la Religion actuelle de Nigritie_ (12mo). The study of the fetish elements of the Egyptian religion has been resumed lately with competent knowledge and talent by a German egyptologist, Herr Pietschmann, in an essay which appeared in 1878 in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, which is published in Berlin under the direction of M. Virchow. It is called _Der Ægyptische Fetischdienst und Götterglaube--Prolegomena zur Ægyptischen Mythologie_ (28 pp. 8vo). A great many judicious observations and curious facts are to be found in it; the realistic and materialistic character of the Egyptian conceptions are very well grasped; it is perhaps to be regretted that the author has not endeavoured to make the creeds to which he gives this name of _fétichisme_ somewhat clearer, and to show by what workings of the mind they were adopted and abandoned. With regard to the Egyptian religion, we shall find treated, in the excellent _Manuel de l'Histoire des Religions_, by Tiele, which M. Maurice Vernes has just translated from the Dutch (1 vol. 12mo, Ernest Leroux, 1880), views much the same as those which we have just described. The author denominates the religious state which we call fetishism _animism_, but he points out the fact that this class of conceptions had a perennial influence over the Egyptian mind. "The Egyptian religion," he says, "like the Chinese, was nothing to begin with but an organised _animism_." He finds traces of this _animism_ in the worship of the dead, the deification of the kings, and the adoration of animals. From his point of view the custom of placing a symbol of the divinity rather than an image in the temple, must be traced to fetishism (pp. 44 and 45 of the French version).