Tartak, Ashima, Nergal,
Succoth-benoth, the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,
were endowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits that
monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the nomadic branch,
but he maintains that it has by no means been so unknown among the
members of the political branch as is commonly supposed. But where are
the criteria by which, in the same manner as their dialects, the
religions of the Semitic races could be distinguished from the
religions of the Aryan and Turanian races? We can recognise any
Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it
possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms of
faith, primary or secondary, primitive or derivative, of the Semitic
tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He imagines that he hears the
key-note of a pure monotheism through all the wild shoutings of the
priests of Baal and other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of
that key-note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations,
whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindus or Persians. Such
an assertion could not but rouse considerable opposition, and so
strong seems to have been the remonstrances addressed to M. Renan by
several of his colleagues in the French Institute that, without
awaiting the publication of the second volume of his great work, he
has thought it right to publish part of it as a separate pamphlet. In
his 'Nouvelles Considerations sur le Caractere General des Peuples
Semitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme,' he
endeavours to silence the objections raised against the leading idea
of his history of the Semitic race. It is an essay which exhibits not
only the comprehensive knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and
alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of
the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral
conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with
this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the
critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in
support of his favourite idea are valid or not.

It is but fair to M. Renan that, in examining his statements, we
should pay particular attention to any slight modifications which he
may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts
with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme
resume et explique tou