mon-worship of the Turanians. Indeed the Chinese seem to
have a mental aversion to the conception of a personal god, and to
think either of the host of earth spirits and other demons, or else of
the pantheistic abstraction of heaven.

Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages we find
that it results from combinations of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris,
Isis, and Horus (so familiar as a triad) are found at first as separate
units in different places, Isis as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a
self-existent god. Each city appears to have but one god belonging to
it, to whom others were added. Similarly in Babylonia each great city
had its supreme god; and the combinations of those, and their
transformations in order to form them in {5} groups when their homes
were politically united, show how essentially they were solitary
deities at first.

Not only must we widely distinguish the demonology of races worshipping
numerous earth spirits and demons, from the theology of races devoted
to solitary great gods; but we must further distinguish the varying
ideas of the latter class. Most of the theologic races have no
objection to tolerating the worship of other gods side by side with
that of their own local deity. It is in this way that the compound
theologies built up the polytheism of Egypt and of Greece. But others
of the theologic races have the conception of 'a jealous god,' who
would not tolerate the presence of a rival. We cannot date this
conception earlier than Mosaism, and this idea struggled hard against
polytheistic toleration. This view acknowledges the reality of other
gods, but ignores their claims. The still later view was that other
gods were non-existent, a position started by the Hebrew prophets in
contempt of idolatry, scarcely grasped by early Christianity, but
triumphantly held by Islam.

We therefore have to deal with the following conceptions, which fall
into two main groups, {6} that probably belong to different divisions
of mankind:--

( Animism.
( Demonology.

( Tribal Monotheism. ) At any stage the unity of
( Combinations forming ) different gods may be
( tolerant Polytheism. ) accepted as a _modus vivendi_
( Jealous Monotheism. ) or as a philosophy.
( Sole Monotheism. )

All of these require mention here, as more or less of each principle,
both of animism and monotheism, can be traced in the innumerable
com