This sentiment, during some thousands of years, became corrupted in the strangest manner.

In many races it did not pass beyond the belief in sorcerers, under the gross form in which we still find it in certain parts of Oceania.

Among some, the religious sentiment degenerated into the shameful scenes of butchery which form the character of the ancient religion of Mexico.

Amongst others, especially in Africa, it became pure Fetichism, that is, the adoration of a material object, to which were attributed supernatural powers.

Like the instinct of love, which at times elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes becomes perverted and ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion during a long period seems only to be a cancer which must be extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors and crimes which the wise ought to endeavor to suppress.
The brilliant civilizations which were developed from a very remote antiquity in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, caused a certain progress to be made in religion.