With what readiness do well-instructed persons, no less than the ignorant, allow themselves to speak without sufficiently reflecting on what they say. In order to elevate material objects, of whatever kind, to the rank of divinities, it would be necessary previously to possess the concept of a divinity. Writers on religion speak of that as existing in primitive times which they seek to describe; they might as well say that primitive men mummified their dead before they had _mûm_ or wax to embalm them with. Fetishism cannot be considered as absolutely primitive, seeing that from its nature it must presuppose the previous growth of the predicate God. This idea of De Brosses and his successors will remain for ever a striking anachronism in the history of religion. The history of all primitive races opens with this note. “Man is conscious of a divine descent, though made from the dust of the earth; the Hindoo doubted it not, though he called Dyn his father, and Prithvi his mother; Plato knew it when he said the earth produced men, but that God formed them.” On the banks of the Rhine, Tacitus listened to the war-songs of the Germans; they were to him in an unknown tongue. “It resembles the whisperings of birds,” he said, but added, “They are cries of valour,” and his ear caught the sound of two words which recurred frequently, “Tuisto Mannus!” We now know what formed the basis of these songs; the Germans were celebrating their lineal ancestors under the names of Tuisto, and Mannus, his son. Tuisto appears to have been one form of Tiu, the Aryan god of light. Tacitus tells us that the Germans “called by the names of gods that hidden thing which they did not perceive except by reverence.”[62] Mannus, so the Germans considered, sprang from the earth, which they venerated as their mother-earth who before nourishing her children on its fruits first gave them life. This Mannus, grandson of the god of light, meant originally man. Certain races living beyond the pale of organised religious systems having been interrogated have furnished the following information concerning their belief. A very low race in India is supposed to worship the sun under the name of Chando or Cando; they declared to the missionaries who had settled amongst them that Chando had created the world. “How is that possible! Who then has created the sun itself?” They replied with “We do not mean the visible Chando, but an invisible one.”[63] “Our god,” said the original natives of California to those who asked in what god they believed, “our god has neither father nor mother, and his origin is quite unknown. But he is present everywhere, he sees everything even at midnight, though himself invisible to human eyes. He is the friend of all good people, and he punishes the evil-doers.”