§ 3. The second point of view, from which some have denied to a section of the human race the faculty and tendency to form myths, is _ethnological_. Either the Semites in general or the Hebrews specially fell a sacrifice to this view. The exclusion of the Semites from the domain of Mythology is announced most emphatically by the ingenious member of the French Academy, Ernest Renan, in the words, ‘Les Sémites n'ont jamais eu de mythologie.’[45] This arbitrary assertion is deduced from a scheme of race-psychology invented by Renan himself, which at the first glance seems so natural and sounds so plausible when described with all the elegance of style of which he is master, that it has become an incontestable scientific dogma to a large proportion of the professional world—for even the territory of science is sometimes dominated by mere dogmas—and is treated by learned and cultivated people not specially engaged in this study as an actual axiom in the consideration of race-peculiarities.[46] The foundation of this scheme is the idea that in their views of the world, the Aryans start from multiplicity, the Semites from unity; and not only in their conception of the world, but also in politics and art. On intellectual ground, therefore, the former create mythology, polytheism, science, which is only possible through discursive observation of natural phenomena; the latter create monotheism, (‘the desert is monotheistic,’ says Renan), and have therefore neither mythology nor science. ‘If it is difficult,’ justly observes Waitz, ‘to estimate the capability of single individuals well known to us, it is a far more dubious task to gauge the intellectual gifts of whole nations and races. It seems scarcely possible to find available standards for the purpose, and consequently the judgment is almost always found to be very much founded on personal impressions. The various nations stand at various times on very different stages of development, and if only actual performances permit a safe induction as to the measure of existing capabilities, then this measure itself seems not to remain the same in the same nation through the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits, especially if we are to assume in all cases that a state of original savageness preceded civilisation.’[47] In fact, the words of this cautious psychologist apply admirably to Renan’s scheme of race-psychology; for history is just what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development in the history of religious thought, and that the latter does not spring up spontaneously,[48] without being preceded by the former stage, and that Polytheism itself is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the mythological view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion, but prepares the way for the rise of religion.