impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
Quiche! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'
_March, 1862._
XV.
SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.[100]
A work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des
Langues Semitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.
[Footnote 100: 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des Langues
Semitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde edition,
Paris, 1858.
'Nouvelles Considerations sur le Caractere General des Peuples
Semitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme,' Par
Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.]
In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
certain general characteristics common to all the members of that
race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or of
Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, and Sanskrit from the
primitive idiom of the ancestors of the Aryan race. The evidence of
language would by itself be quite sufficient to establish the fact
that the Semitic nations descended from common ancestors, and
constitute what, in the science of language, may be called a distinct
race. But M. Renan was not satisfied with this single criterion of the
relationship of the Semitic tribes, and he has endeavoured to draw,
partly from his own observations, partly from the suggestions of other
scholars, such as Ewald and Lassen, a more complete portrait of the
Semitic man. This was no easy task. It was like drawing the portrait
of a whole family, omitting all that is peculiar to each individual
member, and yet preserving the features which, constitute the general
family likeness. The result has been what might be expected. Critics
most familiar with one or the other branch of the Semitic family have
each and all protested that they can see no likeness in the portrait.
It seems to some to contain features which it ought not to contain,
whereas others miss the very expression which appears to them most
striking.
The following is a short abstract of what M. Renan considers the
salient points in the Semitic character:
'Their character,' he says, 'is religious rather than political, and
the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of
God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological
elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant,
and sustained by a fervour which finds its peculiar expression in
prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found
deficient in scientific and philosophical originality. Their poetry is
chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets
for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the
plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage.
Their political life has remained patriarchal and despotic, and their
inability to organise on a large scale has deprived them of the means
of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their
character is a negative one,--their inability to perceive the general
and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or
politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the
individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion,
lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and
impractical for speculation.'
One cannot look at this bold and rapid outline of the Semitic
character without perceiving how many points it contains which are
open to doubt and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to one
point, which, in our mind, and, as far as we can see, in M. Renan's
mind likewise, is the most important of all--namely, the supposed
monotheistic tendency of the Semitic race. M. Renan asserts that this
tendency belongs to the race by instinct,--that it forms the rule, not
the exception; and he seems to imply that without it the human race
would never have arrived at the knowledge or worship of the One God.
If such a remark had been made fifty years ago, it would have roused
little or no opposition. 'Semitic' was then used in a more restricted
sense, and hardly comprehended more than the Jews and Arabs. Of this
small group of people it might well have been said, with such
limitations as are tacitly implied in every general proposition on the
character of individuals or nations, that the work set apart for them
by a Divine Providence in the history of the world was the preaching
of a belief in one God. Three religions have been founded by members
of that more circumscribed Semitic family--the Jewish, the Christian,
the Mohammedan; and all three proclaim, with the strongest accent, the
doctrine that there is but one God.
Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been
considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for
their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab
tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of
a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light.
The Semitic family is divided by M. Renan into two great branches,
differing from each other in the form of their monotheistic belief,
yet both, according to their historian, imbued from the beginning with
the instinctive faith in one God:
1. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews, and the
neighbouring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the descendants of
Terah; and
2. The political branch, including the nations of Phenicia, of Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Yemen.
Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the worshippers of
Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon,
Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom,
Adrammelech, Annamelech, Nibhaz and 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 tous 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 desperate 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 pas reussi a
accomplir?'
M. Renan then defines the monotheism of the Jews, and of the Semitic
nations in general, as the result of a low, rather than of a high
state of intellectual cultivation: 'Il s'en faut,' he writes (p. 40),
'que le monotheisme soit le produit d'une race qui a des idees
exaltees en fait de religion; c'est en realite le fruit d'une race qui
a peu de besoins religieux. C'est comme _minimum_ de religion, en fait
de dogmes et en fait de pratiques exterieures, que le monotheisme est
surtout accommode aux besoins des populations nomades.'
But even this _minimum_ of religious reflection which is required,
according to M. Renan, for the perception of the unity of God, he
grudges to the Semitic nations, and he is driven in the end (p. 73)
to explain the Semitic Monotheism as the result of a religious
instinct, analogous to the instinct which led each race to the
formation of its own language.
Here we miss the usual clearness and precision which distinguish most
of M. Renan's works. It is always dangerous to transfer expressions
from one branch of knowledge to another. The word 'instinct' has its
legitimate application in natural history, where it is used of the
unconscious acts of unconscious beings. We say that birds build their
nests by instinct, that fishes swim by instinct, that cats catch mice
by instinct; and, though no natural philosopher has yet explained what
instinct is, yet we accept the term as a conventional expression for
an unknown power working in the animal world.
If we transfer this word to the unconscious acts of conscious beings,
we must necessarily alter its definition. We may speak of an
instinctive motion of the arm, but we only mean a motion which has
become so habitual as to require no longer any special effort of the
will.
If, however, we transfer the word to the conscious thoughts of
conscious beings, we strain the word beyond its natural capacities, we
use it in order to avoid other terms which would commit us to the
admission either of innate ideas or inspired truths. We use a word in
order to avoid a definition. It may sound more scientific to speak of
a monotheistic instinct rather than of the inborn image or the
revealed truth of the One living God; but is instinct less mysterious
than revelation? Can there be an instinct without an instigation or an
instigator? And whose hand was it that instigated the Semitic mind to
the worship of one God? Could the same hand have instigated the Aryan
mind to the worship of many gods? Could the monotheistic instinct of
the Semitic race, if an instinct, have been so frequently obscured, or
the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if an instinct, so
completely annihilated, as to allow the Jews to worship on all the
high places round Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans to become
believers in Christ? Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs.
These are the difficulties into which we are led; and they arise
simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for
their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the
words will play with us.
There are, in fact, various kinds of monotheism, and it becomes our
duty to examine more carefully what they mean and how they arise.
There is one kind of monotheism, though it would more properly be
called theism, or henotheism, which forms the birthright of every
human being. What distinguishes man from all other creatures, and not
only raises him above the animal world, but removes him altogether
from the confines of a merely natural existence, is the feeling of
sonship inherent in and inseparable from human nature. That feeling
may find expression in a thousand ways, but there breathes through all
of them the inextinguishable conviction, 'It is He that hath made us,
and not we ourselves.' That feeling of sonship may with some races
manifest itself in fear and trembling, and it may drive whole
generations into religious madness and devil worship. In other
countries it may tempt the creature into a fatal familiarity with the
Creator, and end in an apotheosis of man, or a headlong plunging of
the human into the divine. It may take, as with the Jews, the form of
a simple assertion that 'Adam was the son of God,' or it may be
clothed in the mythological phraseology of the Hindus, that Manu, or
man, was the descendant of Svayambhu, the Self-existing. But, in some
form or other, the feeling of dependence on a higher Power breaks
through in all the religions of the world, and explains to us the
meaning of St. Paul, 'that God, though in times past He suffered all
nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless He left not Himself
without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and
fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.'
This primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of
dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive
revelation, in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his
existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and
felt God as the only source of his own and of all other existence. By
the very act of the creation, God had revealed Himself. There He was,
manifested in His works, in all His majesty and power, before the face
of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into
whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of
God.
This primitive intuition of God, however, was in itself neither
monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either,
according to the expression which it took in the languages of man. It
was this primitive intuition which supplied either the subject or the
predicate in all the religions of the world, and without it no
religion, whether true or false, whether revealed or natural, could
have had even its first beginning. It is too often forgotten by those
who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural
unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been
preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the
plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived
the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a
god. It would be, however, quite as great a mistake to imagine,
because the idea of a god must exist previously to that of gods, that
therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many
gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation
of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the
conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.
The primitive intuition of the Godhead is neither monotheistic nor
polytheistic, and it finds its most natural expression in the simplest
and yet the most important article of faith--that God is God. This
must have been the faith of the ancestors of mankind previously to any
division of race or confusion of tongues. It might seem, indeed, as if
in such a faith the oneness of God, though not expressly asserted, was
implied, and that it existed, though latent, in the first revelation
of God. History, however, proves that the question of oneness was yet
undecided in that primitive faith, and that the intuition of God was
not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. There are,
in reality, two kinds of oneness which, when we enter into
metaphysical discussions, must be carefully distinguished, and which
for practical purposes are well kept separate by the definite and
indefinite articles. There is one kind of oneness which does not
exclude the idea of plurality; there is another which does. When we
say that Cromwell was a Protector of England, we do not assert that he
was the only protector. But if we say that he was the Protector of
England, it is understood that he was the only man who enjoyed that
title. If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive
intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion,
it would have been--'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One
God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly
called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express
the faith in a single god.