Note 646 — Chapter VIII · COMMENCEMENT OF MONOTHEISM AND THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE MYTHS.

Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Green and Grose, vol. II. p. 311; compare Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England, in 3 vols. vol. I. p. 251; Pfleiderer, Die Religion und ihre Geschichte, II. 17. Before Hume the view that Polytheism was a degradation of a previous Monotheism was generally admitted. But Hume’s exposition did not put an end to this radically false idea. Creuzer’s great work, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, is based on this false assumption, and Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion starts from the same premiss. And many able English scholars still speak again and again of the degradation of the primeval Monotheism into Polytheism. Not only one-sided theologians start from this axiom; Gladstone’s mythological system, in his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, and Juventus Mundi is founded upon it, all progress in history, philology and mythology notwithstanding.