Note 100 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

But the ordinary argument as to the vogue of “pure monotheism” at any time is in the main a series of traditional assumptions. For the more thoughtful of the ancients, polytheism was always tending to pass into monotheism. We see the process going on in the Vedas, in Brahmanism, in the Egyptian system, in the Babylonian—to say nothing of the Greek.100 It proceeded partly by way of henotheism—the tendency to exalt any particular deity as the deity: partly by way of the compelled surmise that all the deities of the popular creeds were but aspects or names of one all-controlling Power. Wherever creeds met, the more thoughtful were driven to ask themselves whether the heavens could be a mere reflex of the earth, with every nation represented by its special God; and to fuse the national Gods into one was but a step to fusing the Gods of the various natural forces into one. Since religions became organized, there must always have been monotheists, as there must always have been unbelievers.