ups to be considered are polytheism, dualism, and monotheism, to
which may be added brief mention of systems that do not recognize a
personal divine ruler of the world.

POLYTHEISM

+945+. The first stage in the final theistic history of the world up to
the present day, polytheism, appears in all the great civilized nations.
The great polytheistic systems have much in common: for example,
protection of civil order and morality by a god; prominence of the god
of a ruling tribe or family or of a great city; disposition to embody
certain general facts, as war, love, learning, in divine figures;
tendency to make some god universal. On the other hand, they differ
among themselves in certain regards: in the degree of specialization and
differentiation of divine functions, and in the stress that they lay on
the various departments of human life. Their agreements and
disagreements seem to be in some cases independent of racial relations
and climatic conditions; their roots lie so far back in history that we
have no means of tracing their genesis and development.

+946+. The Egyptian and the Semitic peoples were parts of the same
original stock,[1730] and their systems of social and political
organization were substantially identical--the government in its
developed form was monarchical, but tribal and other locally isolated
forms of organization maintained themselves to a certain extent--and
their literary and artistic outputs do not differ materially. We might,
then, expect their religions to be in the main identical. In fact they
agree in having a relative meagerness of theistic differentiation, but
in some important points they are far apart. The Semites were
indifferent to the future life, the Egyptians constructed it elaborately
(in this point taking precedence among the ancients); the Semites were
averse to divinizing human beings, for the Egyptians kings were divine.
In this last point Egypt resembles China, but in other respects is at a
world-wide remove from it. Other peoples thought of their gods as having
relations with beasts; the Egyptians alone, among civilized nations,
worshiped the living animal.[1731] Some Greek writers regarded Egypt as
the religious mother of Greece, but Hellenic cults show little
resemblance to Egyptian.

+947+. The Hebrews had the general Semitic theistic and cultic scheme,
but in their capacity (in their higher development) to content
themselves with one deity, and in their elaborati