a single trunk has been divided amongst a multitude of shoots.  This comparison expresses well enough the opinion which tends to prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the historical development of religions.  The idea of the only God is at the root,—­it is primitive; polytheism is derivative.  A forgotten, and as it were slumbering, monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is the concealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have absorbed all the sap.  The ancient God (allow me once more a comparison) is like a sovereign confined in the interior of his palace:  he is but seldom thought of, and only on great occasions; his ministers alone act, entertain requests, and receive the real homage.

The proposition of the historical priority of monotheism is very important, and is not universally admitted.  It will therefore be necessary to show you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not speaking rashly.  One of the most accredited mythologists of our time, Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes as follows:  “The monotheistic form appears to be the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in its infancy formed polytheism....  All mythologies lead us to this conclusion."[11] Among the French savants devoted to the study of ancient Egypt, the Vicomte de Ronge stands in the foremost rank.  This is what he tells us:  “In Egypt the supreme God was called the one God, living indeed, He who made all that exists, who created other beings.  He is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven and created the earth.”  The writer informs us that these ideas are often found reproduced “in writings the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;” then he comes to this conclusion:  “Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious idea, at the following conclusion:  “To sum up:  primitive monotheism of a character more or less vague, passing gradually into a polytheism still simple, such appears to have been the religion of the ancient Aryas."[13] One of our fellow-countrymen, who cultivates with equal modesty and perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has procured the greater part of the recent works published on these subjects in France, Germany, and England.  He has read them, pen in hand, and, at my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look over his notes which have been long accumulating.  I find the following sentence in the manuscripts which he has shown me:  “The general impression of all the most distinguished mythologists of the present day is, that monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan mythology.”