BROSSES, Charles de. — French writer, born in Dijon on 7 Feb. 1709 and died in Paris on 7 May 1777. Counsellor to the Parliament of Dijon, later President and First President, he is generally known by this title.
A prolific polygraph; the work to which he devoted his entire life is the *Histoire de la république romaine dans le cours du VIIe siècle* (1777), rich in material but collected with little critical sense. The work, however, that constitutes his principal and perhaps sole claim to fame among posterity is the collection of *Lettres familières écrites d'Italie en 1739 et 1740*, written during a stay of about a year in Italy, in which he reveals himself as a keen observer and indefatigable researcher. These letters, highly objective and therefore of documentary value, written in a simple and spontaneous, light and pleasant style, give a precise idea of the society and customs of the time, seen through the eyes of one of the most curious spirits of the 18th century, open-minded, lover of art, of refined taste, not incapable of subtle irony and at times of irreligious boldness.
Recent editions of the *Lettres* have been edited by E. Pilon and by Y. Bezard (Paris 1929).
President de B. also wrote a *Histoire des navigations aux terres australes*, a *Traité de la formation mécanique des langues* (1765), etc., but their excessive diffuseness, the superficial competence, the disorder in treatment, the vagueness and impropriety of expression, deprive them today of any value.
With the memoir *Du culte des dieux fétiches ou parallèle de l'ancienne religion de l'Egypte avec la religion actuelle de la Nigérie* (Paris 1760), de B. writes one of the first pages of the comparative history of religions. The occasion for his work was drawn by the French writer from the interest of scholars in the second half of the 18th century in natural peoples (who had been the subject of a famous work by Lafitau), and the material was provided by the reports of Portuguese sailors and merchants, who had had occasion to explore the west coast of Africa. These had noted how the natives wore objects (shells, animal teeth or tails, feathers, iron, etc.) hanging from their necks or belts, evidently as charms. The Portuguese called these charms by the same name they used for those (medals, scapulars, etc.) that they themselves wore for the same purpose: *feitico*, from the Latin *facticius*. De B. appropriated the term, extending it to include all kinds of objects and even sacred animals, to which acts of worship were directed in ancient Egypt, and made of fetishism, in conjunction with Sabaism or astrolatry, the initial stage of the uniform religious development of all peoples, with the exception of the Hebrews. Fetishism would have its origin in fear; Sabaism in admiration.
This doctrine, which later proved inconsistent, has, stoically, its value, since it inspired, albeit indirectly, the evolutionary positivism of the following century, which culminated in Auguste Comte.