HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 377 



and who perfected the religious idea of his nation. 

 This idea, in its Semitic simplicity, consisted in a 

 belief in the existence of one, eternal, infinite God, 

 the immediate creator of all things ; it included the 

 tradition of man's loss of his original felicity, and 

 the promise of a restoration of all peoples, and of 

 the Israelites in particular, to their former condition 

 of earthly happiness. Christ appeared, and while 

 he upheld the Mosaic law and its original idea, he 

 declared himself to be the promised deliverer, sent 

 of God ; the Sou of God, which among the Semitic 

 people was the term applied to their prophets. His 

 moral teaching gave a more perfect form to the old 

 law, and by his example he afforded a model of human 

 virtue worthy of all veneration ; the germs of a 

 marvellous civilization were to be found in his moral 

 and partially new teaching. The same doctrine had 

 been, to some extent, inculcated by the Jewish 

 teachers, and the schools of Hillel and Gamaliel 

 were certainly not morally inferior to his own, as 

 we learn from the tradition of the Talmud, and 

 from some passages in the Acts of the Apostles. 

 The origin, development, and teaching of primitive 

 Christianity were therefore essentially Semitic, 

 since it had its origin in a people of that race, and 

 in a man of that people. Yet the Semitic race did 

 not become Christian ; and, after so many ages have 

 elapsed, it still rejects Christianity. It was the Aryan 

 race, to which we Europeans belong, which adopted 



