fore neither mythology nor science. If it is difficult, justly observes Waitz, 'to estimate the capability of single individuals well known to us, it is a far more dubious task to gauge the intellectual gifts of whole nations and races. It seems scarcely possible to find available standards for the purpose, and consequently the judgment is almost always found to be very much founded on personal impressions. The various nations stand at various times on very different stages of development, and if only actual performances permit a safe induction as to the measure of existing capabilities, then this measure itself seems not to remain the same in the same nation through the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits, especially if we are to assume in all cases that a state of original savageness preceded civilisation.'[1] In fact, the words of this cautious psychologist apply admirably to Renan's scheme of race-psychology; for history is just what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development in the history of religious thought, and that the latter does not spring up spontaneously,[2] without being preceded by the former stage, and that Polytheism itself is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the mythological view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion, but prepares the way for the rise of religion.
To form some idea of the arbitrariness of schemes founded upon some universal characteristics, we have only to glance over the literature which sprang up as soon as Renan's dictum was uttered, either to refute it, or to work his hypothesis still further—a regular host of dissertations fighting on this side or on that.[3] On reading these,
- ↑ Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 297.
- ↑ On the other side, Renan says (Hist. gén. 4th ed., p. 497) 'Cette grande conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle (i. e. for the Semitic race) l'effet chi progrès; ce fut une de ces premières aperceptions.'
- ↑ Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by Léon Hugonnet: La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques en reponse à M. Renan, Geneva 1873.
