negative position towards the objects of worship of other peoples; and they were, in fact, quite dependent on the latter, and receptive in temper. But having once risen to a consciousness of their own individuality, they regarded their own God exclusively as the Existing one, and denied the existence of the gods of nations towards which it acknowledged a national opposition. The germs of this religious development, so favourable to Monotheism, are bound up with the rise of a strong national consciousness; but the latter would not alone avail to create Monotheism at one blow; it only stimulates and encourages, but has need of other psychical and historical coefficients. Eduard Hartmann, who, in his recent work on the Philosophy of Religion, justly insists on the influence of the idea of nationality upon the growth of Monotheism, calls attention to another stage in the relation of the nation to the gods of strange peoples—that at which the strange gods are looked on as _usurpers_. Speaking of the three phases of development of Hebrew monotheism, he says:[655] ‘With the increase of national feeling, their pride in their God was heightened. From the moment when they raised him to the position of sole creator of heaven and earth, they could not but regard the dominion of other gods on the earth created by Jehovah as usurped, and could only hope for the honour of their own God that ultimately the peoples would turn to him and adore him as the highest God, the only creator of the world. But then the progressive development of Monotheism went further, to the point of not merely regarding the strange gods as usurpers beside Jehovah, but of declaring them to be _false_ gods.’ What is the exact meaning of this view of _usurping_ gods in the growth of Monotheism? In the growth of religions there is no stage at which certain divine persons are acknowledged as powerful and influential on the fate of the world or of a nation, and yet treated as possessing _illegitimate_ power and _influence_. Their power might be unjustly exercised, but never illegitimate. The existence of gods is identified with their legitimacy. The conquest of some gods by others, which is told in theogonies and mythologies, is not explained by supposing one of the contending powers to have usurped his power, but by regarding the conquered as weaker than the conquering one.