RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Fetishism Feuillants
of a reversion to them among civilized nations, especially those which lag in the course of progress. Thus there can be no doubt 6. Cases of that in Roman Catholic countries the Reversion, peasantry hold their medals, agni dei, and other religious emblems in fetishistic regard. A Russian mujik has been known, when about to commit a crime, to cover the icon in the room so that it might not witness the deed. And within a generation the Bible has been fetishistically employed in Scotland by laying it on the doorstep to keep out witches. Geo. W Gilmore.
Bibliography: The fundamental work is that of De Brosses, ut sup., and next to that is F. Schultze, Der Fetichismus, Leipsic, 1871, Eng. transl., New York, 1885. Consult also: T. Waitz, Anthropologic der Naturvolker, Leipsic, 1860; C. F. Keary, Outlines of Religion, chaps, i., iii., London, 1882; R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891; G. Allen, Evolution of Idea of God, London, 1897; D. G. Brinton, Religion of Primitive Peoples, chap, iv., New York, 1897; Miss M. H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, London, 1898; idem, West African Studies, ib. 1899; A. Lang, Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242, ib. 1884; idem, Making of Religion, chap, viii., ib. 1898; M. Gaston, in Folk-Lore, xi., 1900; F. B. Jevons, Introduction to History of Religion, chap, xiii., London, 1902; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii., ib. 1903; R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, New York, 1904; A. C. Haddon, Magicand Fetishism, London, 1906; G. Belucci, IlFeticismo primitivo in Italia, Perugia, 1907.
FEUERBACH, fei'er-baH, LUDWIG ANDREAS:
German philosopher; b. at Landshut (39 m. n.e. of Munich), Bavaria, July 28, 1804; d. at Rechenberg, near Nuremberg, Sept. 13, 1872. He attended the Gymnasium at Ansbach, and in 1822 entered the University of Heidelberg as a student of theology. Through the lectures of Karl Daub he became interested in Hegelianism, and in 1824 went to Berlin to hear Hegel. He soon gave up theology for philosophy, and in 1828 became docent in philosophy at Erlangen. Promotion to a professorship having been made next to impossible by his Gedanken iiber Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Nuremberg, 1830), in which he disposed of immortality on psychological grounds, he withdrew from the university to devote himself to literary work. He lived in Ansbach till 1836, then at the Castle at Bruckberg till 1860, when he moved to Rechenberg. His radical views made his name a watchword in the late forties, and in 1848-49, by special petition of the students, he lectured in Heidelberg. Accepting the view of Hegel that the Absolute attains consciousness in the human mind, he went one step further and denied the existence of an absolute mind, explaining God as a subjective product of our conscious life. He regarded religion as psychological illusion, a purely subjective process; and God, heaven, and eternal life as desires of the heart realized by the imagination. In short, according to his naturalistic view, God did not make us after his own image at all; rather, we made God after ours; and thus theology becomes a matter of anthropology. Although Feuerbach is the author of that extremely materialistic formula, Der Mensch ist, was er isst, " man is what he eats," yet he can scarcely be called a materialist, since he approaches the problem from the psychological side. His principal works are: Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipsic, 1841; Eng. transl., The
Essence of Christianity, by George Eliot, London, 1854); Das Wesen der Religion (1845); Das Theogenie, oder von dem Ursprung der Gotter (1857); Gott, Freiheit, und Unsterblichkeit vom Standpunkt der Anthropologic (1866). His collected works in ten volumes appeared at Leipsic 1846-66.
Bibliography: C. Beyer, Leben und Geist; Ludwig Feuerbach, Leipsic, 1873; W Maccall, The Newest Materialism, London, 1873; K. Griin, Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Briefwechsel und Nachlass, Leipsic, 1874; W. Bolin, Ludwig Feuerbach, sein Wirken und seine Zeitgenossen, Stuttgart, 1891. Consult also the works on the History of Philosophy by Windelband, Ueberweg, and Erdmann.
FEUILLANTS, fu'Tya'n: Roman Catholic congregation taking its name from its place of origin, the Cistercian monastery of Fulium (Feuillans, near Rieux, 25 m. s.w. of Toulouse). It was established as a Reformed body within the Cistercians about 1580 by Jean de la Barriere, a scion of noble family born at St. Cere' (60 m. n.e. of Montauban) in 1544; d. 1600. Being appointed abbot in commendam of the monastery by a kinsman who had become a convert to Protestantism, De la Barriere led a life of sensuality until, about 1575, twelve years after his appointment, he resolved to enter the Cistercian order. He was deserted by the majority of the monks, however, on account of the rigidity of his regulations, but those who adhered to him adopted a rule still more severe than the Cistercian system. He secured the sanction of Sixtus V., who permitted him (1589) to establish additional monasteries and nunneries. Henry III. of France requested him to send sixty monks to Paris, and founded for them in 1587 a monastery in the Rue St. Honore\ which in the French Revolution gave the name of Feuillants to the royalist party who met within its walls. The successor of De Barriere enjoyed the title of Vicar- General of the Congregation, and secured complete independence of the Cistercians. In 1595 new rules were approved by the pope, modifying the extreme stringency of De Barriere, which had proved injurious to health. The congregation increased rapidly. In the lifetime of their founder the Feuillants possessed, in addition to the mother house, the monastery at Paris, and two at Rome, one at Bordeaux and several in Piedmont, and in the reign of Henry IV., when they received the right of electing their own general, they had between twenty and thirty monasteries both in France and Italy. For purposes of discipline, Urban VIII. divided the congregation (1630) into the French Congregation de Notre Dame de Feuillans and the Italian Riformati di San Bernardo, each with its own general and general chapter. The congregation flourished until the Revolution, and among its men of note were Charles de St. Paul and Cardinal Bona.
There were also Feuillant nuns. In 1588 De la Barriere established a nunnery at Montesquiou with fifteen sisters, but their cloister proving too small, they occupied a new convent at Toulouse in 1599. A third nunnery was erected at Poitiers in 1617 and a fourth at Paris in 1622. The rule of the nuns was the same as that of the monks, and they likewise were entirely independent of Cistercian control. Their convents were never numerous,
Fiacre Fiddes