Thus before Mohammed appeared polytheism was the prevalent religion of Arabia,a degradation even from the ancient Sabaean faith.

Australia escaped polytheistic degeneracy by having no aristocracy, as in Polynesia, where aristocracy, as in early Greece, had developed polytheism.

Aristocratic institutions fostered polytheism with the old Supreme Being obscured, or superseded, or enthroned as Emperor-God, or King-God.

This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism.

He holds, in effect, that all religions take their rise in the desire to explain the world; and that, in regard to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not by preaching monotheism polytheism or pantheism, but in so far as they recognize pessimism or optimism as the true description of life.

Thus the Creed really teaches polytheism, but saves orthodoxy by forbidding any one to call it by its true name.