s les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his
later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is
ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily
our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with
great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course,
only in order to return with unabated courage to his first
position,--that of all the races of mankind the Semitic race alone was
endowed with the instinct of monotheism. As it is impossible to deny
the fact that the Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed
monotheistic instinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded
forms of a polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews, the most
monotheistic of all, frequently provoked the anger of the Lord by
burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks that when he speaks of
a nation in general he only speaks of the intellectual aristocracy of
that nation. He appeals in self-defence to the manner in which
historians lay down the character of modern nations. 'The French,' he
says, 'are repeatedly called "_une nation spirituelle_," and yet no
one would wish to assert either that every Frenchman is _spirituel_,
or that no one could be _spirituel_ who is not a Frenchman.' Now, here
we may grant to M. Renan that if we speak of '_esprit_' we naturally
think of the intellectual minority only, and not of the whole bulk of
a nation; but if we speak of religion, the case is different. If we
say that the French believe in one God only, or that they are
Christians, we speak not only of the intellectual aristocracy of
France but of every man, woman, and child born and bred in France.
Even if we say that the French are Roman Catholics, we do so only
because we know that there is a decided majority in France in favour
of the unreformed system of Christianity. But if, because some of the
most distinguished writers of France have paraded their contempt for
all religious dogmas, we were to say broadly that the French are a
nation without religion, we should justly be called to order for
abusing the legitimate privileges of generalization. The fact that
Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm believers in one God
could not be considered sufficient to support the general proposition
that the Jewish nation was monotheistic by instinct. And if we
remember that among the other Semitic races we should look in vain for
even four such names, the case would seem to be desperat