In other words, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, whose character is essentially different, and even _radically opposed_: first, the Theological method; then, the Metaphysical; and, last of all, the Positive.

Hence three systems of Philosophies, which _mutually exclude each other_.

The first is the necessary starting-point of the human mind; the third is its fixed, ultimate state; the second is purely provisional, and destined merely to serve as an intermediate stage."[58] These are the _three_ great stages through which the collective mind of Humanity must necessarily pass in its progressive advancement towards a perfect knowledge of truth; but of these three, the _first_, or the Theological Epoch, is again subdivided, and exhibited as commencing with Fetishism, then advancing to Polytheism, and finally consummated in Monotheism.
FETISHISM is supposed to have been the first form of the Theological Philosophy; and it is described as consisting in the ascription of a life and intelligence essentially analogous to our own to every existing object, of whatever kind, whether organic or inorganic, natural or artificial.

It is traced to a primitive tendency, supposed to exist equally in man and in the lower animals, to conceive of all external objects as animated, and to ascribe to them the same, or similar, powers and feelings with those which belong to the living tribes themselves.[59] "Let an infant, for example, or a savage, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a dog or a monkey, behold a watch for the first time, there will doubtless be no immediate profound difference, unless in respect to the manner of representing it, between the spontaneous conception which will represent to the one and the other that admirable product of human industry as a sort of veritable animal, having its own peculiar tastes and inclinations; whence results, consequentially, in this respect, a Fetishism fundamentally common to both, the former only having the exclusive privilege of being able ultimately to get out of it." This instinctive and spontaneous belief--the natural, and, indeed, the necessary result of a tendency inherent in living beings--is conceived to have been an indispensable and a most useful provision for the primeval state of man, and to have exerted a highly salutary influence on the progressive development of human thought.

It is contrasted with the subsequent but more advanced stage of Polytheism;[60] and the latter is held to denote a spontaneous belief in supernatural beings, distinct from and even independent of matter, since it is passively subject to their will; while the former considers matter itself as animated, and has no idea of any higher or more spiritual form of being.