Over and above the conception of the infinite there is another and a similar notion that it is equally impossible to discover at the roots of religious thought; it is that of unity in plurality, of totality. This pantheistic, monistic concept Von Hartmann believes to be the starting-point of all religions. As a partial disciple of Hegel and of Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann inevitably attributes to humanity and applies to the interpretation of history the formulæ of his dialectic. “Henotheism,” he says, “is founded on a recognition of the positive identity at bottom of all the divinities of nature; an identity which permits one to adore in the person of every god individually, and principally in the person of each of the leading gods, absolute divinity, the divine god. It becomes therefore a matter of indifference, in some measure, under which of its particular aspects one worships Divinity; when Indra is represented imaginatively in the form of a buffalo, the right to represent him immediately afterward in the form of an eagle, or a falcon, is not for an instant abrogated; when henotheism offers its homage to the supreme deity under the name of Indra, god of the tempest, it does not incapacitate itself from adoring him a moment afterward under the name of Surya, god of the sun; or of Rudra-Varuna, god of the heavens. Henotheism does not owe its origin, therefore, to a failure in the association of ideas, and to a chance forgetfulness, an incredible lapse of memory on the part of polytheists, when they were addressing their homage to Surya as the supreme god, that there were still other gods in existence who were adored by other people, and even sometimes by themselves.” Imagine primitive humanity “up” in the latest developments of the philosophy of monism, with its symbolism and its notion of conceiving diverse powers as metaphorical manifestations of the fundamental unity of things! Even for India, the home of pantheistic metaphysics, such a philosophy is the reluctant product of a civilization already refined. People never take the first steps in thought by means of abstractions. To conceive divinity in general, and subsequently represent it by Indra, Surya, or Rudra-Varuna, as by aspects, no one of which exhaust the totality of it—by a sort of litany in which the unity of things appears successively under diverse names and forms—implies a subtlety of intelligence and a mastery of the henotheistic conception of the universe that is one of the latest products of metaphysical speculation. In the beginning the form and figure of the god was not distinguished from the god himself. The distinction between body and mind was one that humanity attained with great difficulty; and, _a fortiori_, any notion of a unity of the supreme and world soul, existing under a multiplicity of forms, must of necessity have made its appearance much later. * * * * * [Sidenote: M. Renan’s religious instinct.]