"The Semitic race, on the other hand, adhered to their old faith, rejected Christianity, as it had been formulated by the Aryans, and had little influence on the world. The Israelites, indeed, dispersed among other nations, retained the idea of the one spiritual God in all its purity, and civilization would have been much indebted to them for this rational idea of God if they had more clearly understood its scientific bearing and the nature of man; many of them are indeed justly entitled to fame in every department of science. But taken by themselves and as a people, they had little effect on civilization, since they lacked the energy of purpose, courage, mental superiority, and imagination, which create a durable and powerful civilization.
"The Arabs, aroused for a time by Mahometan fanaticism, overran great part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but without influencing civilization. While in possession of a great and productive idea, they remained a sterile and nomad people, or founded unproductive dynasties. For the Semitic race, the interval between God and man, and consequently between God and civilization, was and is infinite, impassable. The Arabs possessed nothing but the devastating force of proselytism to fertilize their minds and social relations; and, with the exception of architecture, geography, and cognate sciences, they were for the most part only the transmitters of the science of others. We, on the contrary, filled up the gulf by placing the Man-God between God and man, and civilization has a power and vigour which has never flagged, and which, now that dogma is transformed into reason, will not flag while the world lasts."[31]
This extract from a work published many years ago, seems to me to confirm the theory of myths which I have explained; it shows how they are ultimately fused into a simple form, in conformity with the ideas of civilized society, and it will also throw light on what is to follow.
If we consider the primitive genesis and evolution of myth, confirmed by all the facts of history and ethnography, it will appear that although the matter on which thought was exercised was mythical and fanciful, the form and organizing method were the same as those of science. It is, in fact, a scientific process to observe, spontaneously at first, and then deliberately, the points of likeness and unlikeness between special objects of perception; we must rise from the particular to the general, from the individual to the species, thus ever enlarging the circle of observation, in order to arrive at types, laws, and ultimate unity, or at least a unity supposed to be ultimate, to which everything is reduced. So that the mythical faculty of thought was scientific in its logical form, and was exercised in the same way as the scientific faculty.