ism and the polytheism of the Rig Veda the latter
should be called, if by any new term, rather by a name like
pantheistic polytheism, than by the somewhat misleading word
henotheism. What is novel in it is that it represents the fading of
pure polytheism and the engrafting, upon a polytheistic stock, of a
speculative homoiousian tendency soon to bud out as philosophic
pantheism.

The admission that other gods exist does not nullify the attitude of
tentative monotheism. "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?"
asks Moses, and his father-in-law, when converted to the new belief,
says: "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods."[27] But
this is not the quasi-monotheism of the Hindu, to whom the other gods
were real and potent factors, individually distinct from the one
supreme god, who represents the All-god, but is at once abstract and
concrete.

Pantheism in the Rig Veda comes out clearly only in one or two
passages: "The priests represent in many ways the (sun) bird that is
one"; and (cited above) "They speak of him as Indra, Mitra, Varuna,
Agni, ... that which is but one they call variously." So, too, in the
Atharvan it is said that Varuna (here a pantheistic god) is "in the
little drop of water,"[28] as in the Rik the spark of material fire is
identified with the sun.

The new belief is voiced chiefly in that portion of the Rig Veda which
appears to be latest and most Brahmanic in tone.

Here a supreme god is described under the name of "Lord of Beings,"
the "All-maker," "The Golden Germ," the "God over gods, the spirit of
their being" (x. 121). The last, a famous hymn, Mueller entitles "To
the Unknown God." It may have been intended, as has been suggested,
for a theological puzzle,[29] but its language evinces that in
whatever form it is couched--each verse ends with the refrain, 'To
what god shall we offer sacrifice?' till the last verse answers the
question, saying, 'the Lord of beings'--it is meant to raise the
question of a supreme deity and leave it unanswered in terms of a
nature-religion, though the germ is at bottom fire: "In the beginning
arose the Golden Germ; as soon as born he became the Lord of All. He
established earth and heaven--to what god shall we offer sacrifice? He
who gives breath, strength, whose command the shining gods obey; whose
shadow is life and death.... When the great waters went everywhere
holding the germ and generating light, then arose from them the one
spirit