Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/592

 THE ORIGIN OF MONOTHEISM.

BY A. M. HOCART.

To trace the origin of Monotheism may seem a presump- tuous undertaking ; but perhaps not so much as may appear at first. Scholars often forget that important results may sometimes be achieved by simple means, and that an encyclopaedia is not necessarily the prelude to far-reaching conclusions. They assume that the pre- parations must be as great as the subject ; yet it requires neither genius nor learning to discover such an important law as that nations rise and fall ; only profound and accurate scholarship can discuss such a minor problem as the composition of the Aeneid. It may require more abundant or remoter facts to find the Origin of Mono- theism, than to trace the phases of a nation's rise and fall, but perhaps we have gathered enough facts of late to make at least a guess at this origin. I will attempt no more than a guess : it is something to have suggested a theory which is simple, which is reasonable, and which does not invoke a single process that cannot be shown actually to occur.

The Earliest Known Religion.

We must take our start from the fact that the earliest known religion is a belief in the divinity of kings. I do not say that it is the most primitive ; some will tell you that animism is the most primitive, others that magic is. Let them prove it. So far these are mere surmises, un- supported by any evidence which a historian would accept.^ ^ See " What is primitive ? " Hibbert Journal, Jan. 1920.