a priori absurdity. But it is even more remarkable that Renan, notwithstanding his conviction of the 'uniform psychological constitution of the human race,' in which he finds the justification of a common story of the Deluge springing up everywhere without borrowing,[1] and although he finds the gaps in the chronology of the antediluvian period of the Biblical history filled up, 'par des noms d'anciens héros, et peut-être de divinités qu'on retrouve chez les autres peuples sémitiques,'[2] still speaks of the possibility, indeed of the necessity, that the Semitic race should be destitute of myths.
Renan's hypothesis had to encounter many a hard battle soon after its publication. The theologians were highly pleased at what was said about the monotheistic tendency of Semitism, but thought it blasphemy for Renan to find in Monotheism le minimum de religion and in Polytheism a higher and more civilised stage of religion. And philologists, historians and philosophers assailed the foundations of Renan's pile. Steinthal subjects the notion introduced by Renan, of a monotheistic instinct, to acute psychological criticism. Max Müller does the same, and points to the history of the Hebrews and the other Semites, to resolve the dreams of Semitic Monotheism into their nullity. Abraham Geiger and Salomon Munk (Renan's successor in the chair of the Collége de France) wish to limit to the Hebrew nation the assertion of Semitic Monotheism. Yet what is said about Mythology is not much objected to by any of these critics (with the exception of Steinthal). Indeed, one of the pioneers of modern Comparative Mythology, while combating the monotheistic instinct, takes up a position on the mythological question
- ↑ Histoire générale, p. 486: 'L'unité de constitution psychologique de l'espèce humaine, au moins des grandes races civilisées, en vertu de laquelle les mêmes mythes ont dû apparaître parallèlement sur plusieurs points à la fois, suffirait, d'ailleurs, pour expliquer les analogies qui reposent sur quelque trait général de la condition de l'humanité, ou sur quelques-uns de ses instincts les plus profonds.'
- ↑ Ib, p. 27.
