the Black races, and merchantà all along the shores of the Indian
ocean.
All these carriers of civilization never knew the feeling of plastic
and pictorial beauty. Painting and sculpture were proscribed among
the Hebrews and Arabs by the most sacred precepts of religion,87
whilst art never became national with the Phoenicians; who borrowed
its. forms in turn from Egyptians, Assyrians and Greeks, and
often relapsed into their original barbarism of taste. But before we
subject Shemitic art to a closer consideration, let us throw a glance
on the peculiar civilization of that highly gifted race whose fortunes
were always connected with the history of mankind, and whose
culture modified Indo-European civilization repeatedly and in many
respects.
M. Ernest Henan, in his History of the Shemitic languages,88
describes the character of the Shemites in the most eloquent Words,
which, however, we must restrict in application to the Hebrew and
Arab tribes, inasmuch as they evidently are incomplete às regards
the Phoenicians and Syrians. Besides, we are hound to remind the
reader that the author, carried away by the flow of his eloquence, is
apt to over-state his case. We quote the following passage :
“ Without predetermining the important question of the primitive unity or diversity of
the Arian and Shemitic languages, we must say that, in the present state of science, the
Shemitic languages must be considered as corresponding to a distinct division of mankind.
In fact, the character of the nations speaking them, is marked in history by as original features
as the languages themselves, which served as a formula and boundary to their mind.
It is true that it is less in political than in religious life that their influence has been felt.
Antiquity shows them scarcely playing any active part in the great conquests which swept
over Asia : the civilization of Nineveh and Babylon, in its essential features, does not belong
to nations of that race, and before the'powerful impulse givenrby a new creed to the Arab
tribes, it would be in vain to seek the traces of any great Shemitic empire in history.
But what they were unable to do in the sphere of external power they accomplished in the
moral sphere, and we may, without exaggeration, attribute to them at least one half of the
intellectual work of humanity. Of the two symbols of the mind striving for truth, science
or philosophy remained entirely foreign to them ; but they always understood religion with a
superior instinct; they comprehended it, I may say, with a sense peculiar to themselves.
The reflecting, independent, earnest, courageous, in one word the philosophical research
of truth, seems to be the heir-loom of that Indo-European race, which, from the bottom of
India to the extreme West and North, and from the most remote ages to modern times, has
always sought to explain God, and man, and the world, by reasoning; and accordingly left
behind it— as landmarks of the different stations of its history — systems of philosophy,
always and everywhere agreeing with the laws of a logical development. But to the Shemitic
race belong those firm and positive intuitions which removed at once the veil from
Godhead, and without long reflection and reasoning reached the purest religious form
97 Exodus, xx., 4; J) enter on, V.,8 : —- Throughout Mohammed’s Kur'àn these prohibitions
abound.
98 Histoire générale et Système comparé des langues sémitiques. Ouvrage couronné par
l’Institut. Imprimérie Impériale, 1855. "Vol. i. p. 3, seqq.
antiquity ever knew. The birthplace of philosophy is India and Greece, amidst an inquisitive
race, deeply preoccupied by the search after the secret of all things ; but the psalm and
the prophecy, the wisdom concealed in riddles and symbols, the pure hymn, the revealed
book, are the inheritance of the theocratio race Of the Shemites. This is above all others
the people of Godhead; it is the people of religions, destined to create them and to carry
them abroad. And indeed, is it not remarkable that the three monotheistio religions,
which until now have acted the most important part in the history of civilization, the three
religions marked by a peculiar character of duration, o f feoundity and of proselytism, so
thoroughly interlaced with one another as to appear like three branches of the same tree,
like three expressions unequally oorrect of the same idea,— is it not remarkable, I repeat,
that all the three were born among Shemitic nations, and have started from among them
to pursue their high destinies ? There is but a few days’ journey from Jerusalem to Mount
Sinai, and from Sinai to Mecca.
“ The Shemitic race has neither the elevation of spiritualism known only'to India and
Germany, no# the feeling for measure and perfeot beauty bequeathed by Greece to the
neo-Latin nations, nor the delicate and deep sensitiveness characteristical of the Celts.
Shemitic conscience is clear, but narrow; it wonderfully understands unity, but cannot
comprehend multiplicity. Monotheism sums up and explains all its features.
“ It is the glory of the Shemitio race to have in her earliest days arrived at that notion
.of Godhead which all the other nations had to adopt on her example and on the faith of her
preaching. She has never conceived the government of the world otherwise than as an
absolute monarchy; her “ Theodicy” has not advanced one single step since the book of
Job; the grandeur and the aberrations of Polytheism remained foreign to her. No other
race can of itself discover Monotheism; India, which has philosophized with so much
originality and depth, has, up to our days, not grasped it; and all the vigour of the Hellenic
spirit could not have sufficed to lead mankind to Monotheism without the co-operation of the
Shemites ;• but we can likewise state, that the Shemites would not have mastered the dogma
of the unity of Godhead, had they not found its germ in the most imperious instincts of
their souls and Of their hearts. They were unable to conceive Variety, plurality, or sex, in
Godhead: the word goddess would be the most horrible barbarism in Hebrew.® All the names
by which the Shemites ever designated Godhead: E l , E l o h , A don, B a a l , E l io s , S h a d d a i ,
J eh o v a h , Al l a h , even if they take the plural form, imply the supreme indivisible power
of perfect unity. Nature, on the other hand, has little importance in Shemitic religions,—
the desert is monotheistic. Sublime in its immense uniformity, it revealed immediately the
idea of the infinite to men, but not'the incessantly productive life, which Nature, where she
is more prolific, imparts to other nations. This is the reason why Arabia was always the
bulwark of the most exalted monotheism; for it would be a mistake to seek in Mohammed
the founder of monotheism in Arabia. The worship of the Supreme God (Alláh la&la) was
always at the bottom of Arabian religión.”
“ The Shemites never had mythology. The clear and precise way in which they conceived
Godhead as distinct from the world, not begetting and not begotten, and having no like,
excluded that grand poetry in which India, Persia, Greece [and the Teutonic races], gav¡
vent to their imagination, leaving the boundaries between God, mankind, and nature, unde-
ned and floating. Mythology is the expression of pantheism in religion, and the Shemitio
spirit is the most antagonistic to pantheism. What a distance between the simple concep-
99 The author forgets, apparently, the goddesses of Syria and Phoenicia, the female idols
estroyed by the Arabs upon their conversion to Islim, and the Shemitio adoration of the
astyles (Beth-Ei), the shapeless stones so often figured on coins. The black stone of the
( | belongs to the same class, and reminds us nearly of Fetishism. [ F e e s n e l , when
consul at Djidda, sent his slave to Mecca, and learned from him that, although the pilgrims
■a nearly kissed off the features, the stone still preserves the remains of a human face I
* Lellre> “ Djeddeh, Jan. 1838.”—Journal A siatique.)—G. R. G.]