«on of a God, distinct from the world, whioh he forms aeoording to his will, as a vase ip
moulded hy the hands of the potter, and those Indo-European theogonies, attributing a
diyine soul to Nature, conceiving life as a struggle, and the world as a perpetual change,
thus carrying, as it were, the ideas of revolution and progress among the dynasties of
GO^31 ■ T J T", “ The intolerance of the Shemites is the natural result of their monotheism. Indo-European
nations, before their conversion to Shemitic ideas, never considered their religions as
an absolute truth; they tooh them rather for a family heir-loom, and remained equally
foreign to intolerance and to proselytism.™ It is, therefore, exclusively among Indo-Euro-
peans that we meet with freedom of thought, with a spirit of .criticism and of individual
research. The Shemites, on the contrary, aspiring to realize a worship independent of any
provincial variations, were led in consistency to declare all other religions than their own
to be mischievous. In this sense, intolerance is a Shemitic fact, and a portion of the inheritance,
good and bad, which this race has bequeathed to mankind.
“ The absence of philosophical and scientific culture among the Shemites maybe derived
from that want of breadth and diversity, and therefore of an analytical turn of mind, which
characterizes them. The faculties begetting mythology are, in fact, the same which beget
philosophy. Stricken by the unity of the laws governing the world, the Shemites saw m the
development of things nothing but the unalterable fulfilment of the will of a superior being;
they never conceived multiplicity in nature. But the conception of multiplicity in the universe
becomes polytheism with nations which are still in their infancy, and science with nations
that have arrived at maturity. This is the reason why Shemitic wisdom never advanced
beyond the proverb and the parable,—points of departure for Greek philosophy. The books
of Job and Ecclesiastes, which represent the highest culmination of Shemitic philosophy,
turn the problem over and over again in all directions, without advancing one step nearer
to the solution; to them the dialectic and dose reasoning of Socrates is altogether wanting:
even when Ecclesiastes seems to approach a solution, it is only in order to arrive at
formulas antagonistic to science, such as “ Vanity of vanities” — “ nothing is new under
the sun,” “ he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,”— formulas the result of
which is, to enjoy life, and to serve God: and indeed these are the two poles of Shemitic
existence.
“ The Shemites are neariy entirely devoid of inquisitiveness. Their idea of the power
of God is such, that nothing can astonish them. To the most surprising accounts, to sights
most likely to strike him, the Arab opposes but one reflection, “ God is powerful!” whilst,
when in doubt, he avoids to come to a conclusion, and after having expounded the reasons
f o r and against, escapes from decision by the formula ‘God knows it ! ’
“ The poetry of the Shemitic nations is distinguished by the same want of variety. The
eminently subjective character of Arabic and Hebrew poetry results from another essential
feature of Shemitio spirit, the complete absence of creative imagination, and accordingly
of fiction.
“ Hence, amongthese peoples, we may explain the absolute absence of plastic arts. Even
the adornments of manuscripts by which Turks and Persians have displayed such a lively sentiment
for color, is antipathetic to the Arabs, and altogether unknown in countries where
the Arab spirit has remained untainted, as for instance in Morocco. Music, of all the arts
most subjective, is the only one known to Shemites. Painting and sculpture have always
been banished front them by religious prohibition; their realism cannot be reconciled with
oreative invention, which is the essential condition of the two arts. A Mussulman to whom
the traveller Bruce showed the painting of a fish, asked him, after a moment of surprise: “ If
this fish, on the day of judgment, rises against thee and accuses thee by saying, Thou hast
100 This does not exclude their rigor against apostasy or infidelity at different periods of
their history, since it implied an attack upon their national existence. With the Greeks,
for instance, religion was intimately connected with nationality, and their nationality being
exclusive, (for every foreigner was a barbarian.) proselytism became impossible.
given me a body, but. no living soul, what wilt thou reply ?’ The anathemas against any
figured representation, repeated over and oyer again tin the Mosaic books, and the iconoclastic
zeal of Mohammed, evidently prove the tendency of those nations to take the statue
for a real individual being. Artistic races, accustomed to detach the symbol from the idea,
were not obliged to act with such severity.”
Renan’s remarks, as already mentioned, apply principally to the
monotheistic branches of the Shemitic race, at their secondary stage
of development : he ignores the peculiarities of the Phoenician nation,
yet mankind owes nearly as much to the polytheistic branch of the
Shemites, in spite of their voluptuous and cruel worship, including
human sacrifices and indescribable abominations, so denounced in
Hebrew and later Arabian literature,—as to their southern brethren
of higher and purer morals. According to the authors of antiquity,
as well as to all modern philologists, the pure phonetic alphabet is
an invention of the Phoenician mind.101 All the different phonetic
alphabets of the world, —perhaps with the exception of the cuneatic
and Hindoo (Lat and Devanagiri) writing,—have originated from the
Phoenician letters ; the Arian nations of course eliminating the Shemitic
gutturals, and replacing them by their own peculiar modifications
of the sound. The hieroglyphics of Egypt remained confined
to the ISTile-valley ; the Devanagiri to the two Indian peninsulas and
their dependencies; the cuneiform character to the basin of the
Tigris and Euphrates, and to the highland flanking it to the east ;
whereas the Phoenician alphabet and those derived from it have been
diffused over all the white race, not only Shemites, but Japetides and
Turanians ; and this fact practically proves the diffusion of Shemitic
influence.
Second in importance only to the phonetic alphabet, is the invention
of coined money, which is again Phoenician ; although the Isle
of Ægina and the empire of Lydia made rival claims to the priority
of the invention.102 But Ægina, the small island between Attica
101 Compare for authorities : Types of Mankind, “ Palseographio excursus on the a rt of
vnnng, by Geo. R. Gliddon ;” and Rknan, Op. cit., I. p. 67. “ I,’écriture alphabétique est
depuis une haute antiquité le privilège particulier des Sémites. C’est aux Sémites que
le monde doit l’alphabet de 22 lettres.”
102 The earliest standard of coinage and of weights and measures in Greece was certainly
that of Ægina, the invention of which was attributed to P iieidon, king of Argos, and lord
of Ægina. Still, criticism cannot but take Pheidon for a semi-mythical person, and the
authorities about his epoch are irreconoilably a t variance with one another. The Parian-
marble chronicle plaoes him about 895 B. c. : Pausanias and Strabo between 770-730 B. c.,
whilst Herodotus (VII. 27) connects him with events which took place about 600 b. o.
Ottfbied Mülleb, therefore (Dorter, iii. 6) assumes two Pheidons; and Weissenborq
suggests Pausanias may have plaoed him originally in the 26th Olympiad, which, by an error
°f the copyist, became the 6th in the extant MS. Whatever be the epoch of Pheidon, so
much is certain, th a t the Æginean standard of weights and measures is not his invention.
oeck, in his “ Metrologische ITntersuchungen,” has established the fact that it was borrowed
from Babylon ; Pheidon can therefore have only introduced it into Greece.
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