The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded on this belief in the incarnation of spirits and the _numen_ of fetishes. There is indeed no real difference between the superstitious adoration of a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in many religions of modern civilization. Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and _gris-gris_ of savages. This fetishtic and idolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development been infused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hung on plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbol of perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills. We have analogous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or the words of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn round the neck. The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lamps kept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help and favour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thus transforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous or civilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, for instance, and some other American peoples regarded the number "four" as sacred. In addition to the cherished remembrance always inspired by portraits of those we love, a breathing of life, as if the dead or absent person were communicating with us in spirit, is perhaps unconsciously infused into the picture while we look at it. These are transient states of consciousness, of which we are scarcely aware, although they do not escape the notice of careful observers. Any dishonour or insult offered to images, whether sacred or profane, deeply moves both the learned and unlearned, both barbarous and civilized peoples, not merely as a base and sacrilegious act against the person represented, but from an instinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in the image. Any one who analyzes the matter will find it impossible to separate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinary scenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resulted from the identification of the image with the thing represented.