[41]. See Nöldeke in Schenkel’s Bibellexikon, 2nd ed. IV. 370.
[42]. Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1869, VI.
[43]. Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, II. 85.
[44]. W.H.I. Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa, 1864, pp. xx-xxvi. See Max Müller’s Introduction to the Science of Religion, London 1873, p. 54.
[45]. Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues sémitiques, p. 7.
[46]. Two instances will suffice to show how Renan’s hypothesis became the common property of educated people. It is treated as fully made out, both by Roscher, the German political economist, and by Draper, the American naturalist and historian of civilisation. The former says: ‘Life in the desert seems to be an especially favourable soil for Monotheism. It wants that luxuriant variety of the productive powers of nature by which Polytheism was encouraged in remarkably fruitful countries, such as India’ (System der Volkswirthschaft, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1873, II. 38). The latter: ‘Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the southern European races; the Semitic have maintained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands, rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God’ (History of Conflict between Religion and Science, London 1875, p. 70). This view has also passed into Peschel’s Völkerkunde, and Bluntschli also, in his lecture on the ancient oriental ideas of God and world in 1861, echoed Renan’s hypothesis of 1855.
[47]. Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 297.
[48]. On the other side, Renan says (Hist. gén. 4th ed., p. 497) ‘Cette grande conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle (i. e. for the Semitic race) l’effet du progrès; ce fut une de ces premières aperceptions.’
[49]. Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by Léon Hugonnet: La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques en réponse à M. Renan, Geneva 1873.
[50]. Histoire générale, p.