A few remarks upon his summing up, p. 43 _et seq._, will complete the review of this chapter. "Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of" consistency, we would find in any rigorous analysis, that Atheism and Pantheism are self-contradictory; but we _have found_ that Theism, "when rigorously analyzed," presents an absolutely consistent system, in which all the difficulties of the Understanding are explained to the person by the Reason, and is entirely thinkable. Such a system, based upon the necessary convictions of man, and justly commanding that these shall be the fixed standard, in accordance with which all doubts and queries shall be dissolved and decided, gives a rational satisfaction to man, and discloses to him his eternal REST. In proceeding to his final fact, which he derives as the permanent in all religions, Mr. Spencer overlooks another equally permanent, equally common, and incomparably more important fact, viz: that Fetishism, Polytheism, Pantheism, and Monotheism,--all religions alike assert _that a god created the Universe_. In other words, the great common element, in all the popular modes of accounting for the vast system of things in which we live is, _that it is the product of an agency external to itself, and that the external agency is personal_. Take the case of the rude aboriginal, who "assumes a separate personality behind every phenomenon." He does not attempt to account for all objects. His mind is too infantile, and he is too degraded to suspect that those material objects which appear permanent need to be accounted for. It is only the changes which seem to him to need a reason. Behind each change he imagines a sort of personal power, superior to it and man, which produces it, and this satisfies him. He inquires no further; yet he looks in the same direction as the Monotheist. In this crude form of belief, which is named Fetishism, we see that essential idea which can be readily traced through all forms of religion, that some _personal_ being, external, and superior to the things that be, produced them. Nor is Atheism a proper exception to this law. For Atheism is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. It is not a doctrine of God, but is a denial that there is any God; and what is most in point, it never was a _popular_ belief, but is only a philosophical Sahara over which a few caravans of speculative doubters and negatists wander. Neither can Hindu pantheism be quoted against the position taken: for Brahm is not the Universe; neither are Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahm does not lose his individuality because the Universe is evolved from him. _Now_ he is thought of as one, and the Universe as another, although the Universe is thought to be a part of his essence, and hereafter to be reabsorbed by him. _Now_, this part of his essence which was _produced_ through Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is _individualized_; and so is one, while he is another.