I hasten to an important consequence of this dual classification of divinities. It led to what I may call the _quantification of the gods_, that is, to conceiving divinity under notions of number or quantity, a step which has led to profound deterioration of the religious sentiment. I do not mean by this the distinction between polytheism and monotheism. The latter is as untrue and as injurious as the former, nor does it contain a whit the more the real elements of religious progress. It is indeed singular that this subject has been so misunderstood. Much has been written by Christian theologians to show the superiority of monotheisms; and by their opponents much has been made of Comte’s _loi des trois états_, which defines religious progress to be first fetichism, secondly polytheism, finally monotheism. Of this Mr. Lewes says: “The theological system arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capable when it substituted the providential action of a single being, for the varied operations of the numerous divinities which had before been imagined.”[187-1] Nothing could be more erroneous than the spirit of this statement; nothing is more correct, if the ordinary talk of the superiority of monotheism in religion be admitted. History and long experience show that monotheistic religions have no special good effect either on the morals or the religious sensibility of races.[187-2] Buddhism,[187-3] Mohammedanism and Judaism are, at least in theory, uncompromising monotheisms; modern Christianity is less so, as many Catholics pray to the Virgin and Saints, and many Protestants to Christ. So long as _the mathematical conception of number_, whether one or many, is applied to deity by a theological system, it has not yet “arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capable.” For let us inquire what a monotheism is? It is a belief in one god as distinct from the belief in several gods. In other words, it applies to God the mathematical concept of unity, a concept which can only come into cognition by virtue of contrasts and determinations, and which forces therefore the believer either to Pantheism or anthropomorphism to reconcile his belief with his reason. No other resource is left him. With monotheism there must always be the idea of numerical separateness, which is incompatible with universal conceptions.