PBOG8ESS OF MAN. 199 



NOTE to CHAPTER XIV. 



RELIGION OP THE SEMITES AND ARYANS I MOIIAMMADANISM. 



Renau has endeavoured to prove that the Semites have an heredi- 

 ary tendency to Monotheism , but Max Miiller denies it, and proves 

 that most of the ancient Semitic races were Polytheists. But the 

 question can hardly be settled in this summary manner. The Semites, 

 like all other races, were obliged to pass through Polytheism on 

 their way to Monotheism, by a gradual transition ; and it must 

 be remembered that the three great Monotheistic religions of the 

 world, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are all of purely Semitic 

 origin. Not only have the Aryan races hitherto shown themselves in- 

 capable of originating a Monotheistic religion, but Christianity, the 

 only one which ever succeeded in grafting itself on an Aryan stock, 

 soon became encrusted with a vast accumulation of dogmas, mainly 

 derived from Aryan Polytheism, from which the Protestant nations 

 have long been struggling to emerge, and have not yet wholly succeeded. 

 Arabia at the time of Mohammad was Polytheistic in the same sense 

 as the Roman Church at the time of the Reformation ; for a great 

 number of subordinate deities were worshipped, and their adoration 

 overshadowed and obscured that of the Supreme Being. Mohammad 

 was really the Arabian Luther, and Islam no more deserves the name of 

 a new religion than Protestantism, being precisely analogous to the 

 Protestant Reformation of nearly a thousand years later. But the 

 teachings of Mohammad fell on Semitic ground, better prepared to 

 receive a Monotheistic religion than that of Europe ; and hence Polv- 

 theism was immediately suppressed with surprising rapidity in the 

 East, whereas it not only holds its own, side by side with Monotheism 

 in Europe at present; but even among the orthodox Protestant sects, 

 none have yet attained to the grand and simple Monotheism which is 

 the chief glory of both Judaism and Islam. To such an extent do 

 Mohammadans carry this principle, that they agree with orthodox 

 Protestantism (the most exoteric of all religions) in completely 

 ignoring the Feminine Principle in the Deity. 



All Aryan religion is more or less progressive, and can only be im- 

 perfectly confined within creeds and articles ; but Semitic religion is not 

 so. Mohammad had a great advantage over Luther, for he had full con- 

 fidence in the divine origin of his inspiration, whereas Luther weakly 

 ascribed much of his own to the devil.* A great Semitic prophet 



* Compare Howitt's " History of the Supernatural," vol. ii. ch. 5. 



