It strikes at the roots of polytheism; and it does so because it goes back not to polytheism but to that from which polytheism springs, the idea of God; and starts from it in a direction which leads to a very different manifestation of the idea of God. And if monotheism displaces polytheism, it does so because it is found by experience to be the more faithful interpretation of that idea of God which even the polytheist has in his soul. In the same way, and for the same reasons, polytheism is not fetishism under another name. The gods of a community are not the fetishes of individuals. The difference between them is not a mere difference of name. Polytheism may, or may not, follow, in order of time, upon fetishism; but polytheism is not merely a form of fetishism. The two are different, and largely inconsistent, interpretations, or misinterpretations, of the same fundamental idea of God. They move in different directions, and are felt by the communities in which they are found, to tend in the direction of very different ends--the one to the good of the community, the other, in its most characteristic manifestations, to the injury of the community. In fetishism and polytheism we see the radiative, dispersive, force of evolution manifesting itself, just as in polytheism and monotheism. The different lines of evolution radiate in different directions, but those lines, all point to a common centre of dispersion--the idea of God. But fetishism, polytheism and monotheism are not different and successive stages of one line of evolution, following the same direction. They are lines of different lengths, moving in different directions, though springing from a common centre--the soul of man. It is because they have a common centre, that man, whichever line he has followed, can fall back upon it and start afresh.