If our view of the development of the idea of God be correct, we can perfectly understand how, in spite of this polytheistic phraseology, the primitive intuition of God should make itself felt from time to time, long before Mohammed restored the belief of Abraham in one God. The old Arabic prayer mentioned by Abulfarag may be perfectly genuine: 'I dedicate myself to thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion, except thy companion, of whom thou art absolute master, and of whatever is his.' The verse pointed out to M. Renan by M. Caussin de Perceval from the Moallaka of Zoheyr, was certainly anterior to Mohammed: 'Try not to hide your secret feelings from the sight of Allah; Allah knows all that is hidden.' But these quotations serve no more to establish the universality of the monotheistic instinct in the Semitic race than similar quotations from the Veda would prove the existence of a conscious monotheism among the ancestors of the Aryan race. There too we read, 'Agni knows what is secret among mortals' (Rig-veda VIII. 39, 6): and again, 'He, the upholder of order, Varu_n_a, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to govern. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has been and what will be done.'[104] But in these very hymns, better than anywhere else, we learn that the idea of supremacy and omnipotence ascribed to one god did by no means exclude the admission of other gods, or names of God. All the other gods disappear from the vision of the poet while he addresses his own God, and he only who is to fulfil his desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshipper as the supreme and only God. [Footnote 104: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p. 536.]