e to any one
but M. Renan.

We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with the admission
that there had been among the Jews a few leading men who believed in
one God, or that the existence of but one God was an article of faith
not quite unknown among the other Semitic races; yet he has hardly
proved more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, all
traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations; but he has
taken no pains to discover the traces of polytheism, whether faint or
distinct, which are disclosed in the same annals. In acting the part
of an advocate he has for a time divested himself of the nobler
character of the historian.

If M. Renan had looked with equal zeal for the scattered vestiges both
of a monotheistic and of a polytheistic worship, he would have drawn,
perhaps, a less striking, but we believe a more faithful, portrait of
the Semitic man. We may accept all the facts of M. Renan, for his
facts are almost always to be trusted; but we cannot accept his
conclusions, because they would be in contradiction to other facts
which M. Renan places too much in the background, or ignores
altogether. Besides, there is something in the very conclusions to
which he is driven by his too partial evidence which jars on our ears,
and betrays a want of harmony in the premises on which he builds.
Taking his stand on the fact that the Jewish race was the first of all
the nations of the world to arrive at the knowledge of one God, M.
Renan proceeds to argue that, if their monotheism had been the result
of a persevering mental effort--if it had been a discovery like the
philosophical or scientific discoveries of the Greeks, it would be
necessary to admit that the Jews surpassed all other nations of the
world in intellect and vigour of speculation. This, he admits, is
contrary to fact:

'Apart la superiorite de son culte, le peuple juif n'en a
aucune autre; c'est un des peuples les moins doues pour la
science et la philosophie parmi les peuples de l'antiquite;
il n'a une grande position ni politique ni militaire. Ses
institutions sont purement conservatrices; les prophetes,
qui representent excellemment son genie, sont des hommes
essentiellement reactionnaires, se reportant toujours vers
un ideal anterieur. Comment expliquer, au sein d'une societe
aussi etroite et aussi peu developpee, une revolution
d'idees qu'Athenes et Alexandrie n'ont