Chapter VIII

PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY

"If a man die, shall he live again?" The question is as old as the Book of Job, but the affirmative answer is much older. The earliest human remains in Europe imply some provision for the dead, and it did not occur to the peoples of the lower culture all over the world to doubt the reality of some kind of continued existence. Did not the living still see them in their dreams (p. 86)?

But this life might be conceived in an infinite variety ol forms. Where was it passed? under what conditions? what would be its privileges and its requirements? how long would it last? To these and a hundred other questions no uniform answers have been returned; and numerous as are the stories of visits to the other world, there is little agreement as to its place, its scenery, its occupations, its society, its government, its duties, its punishments, or its rewards. Yet no field of human imagination reflects more clearly the stage of social and moral development which creates it. Into his pictures of the future man has persistently woven his criticism of the present. But the tenacity of usage and convention in everything affecting the dead has sometimes detained belief at a much lower level than the general progress of ethical feeling might otherwise have suggested. Religious thought does not always move forwards with equal speed over all the relations and possibilities of life.

The logic of the treatment of the dead is full of gaps and inconsistencies. The same people will perform rites which rest upon quite different theories; customs have run together in strange incoherence. This may be sometimes due to the necessity for making provision for different elements in the person which were united while on earth. The wealthy Egyptian required an elaborate home in the tomb for his double or ka, while his ba started on its perilous journey through the mysterious regions of the world of the dead. From the ethical point of view, however, which chiefly concerns the student of comparative religion, the doctrine of the next life falls into two main divisions, as Burton and Tylor pointed out more than a generation ago—theories of continuance, and theories of retribution. They are connected by many intermediate stages of transition, and they range all the way from the crudest conceptions of prolonged existence in the grave, up to exalted solemnities of judgment, of doom, and of the fellowship of heaven.

When a man dies, where will his spirit dwell? Perhaps it will pass into some animal, a bear, a walrus, or a beautiful bird. Perhaps it will haunt his old home. In that case it were well that he should not die where he has lived; let him be carried into the open air as death approaches, or laid in the loneliness of the woods. The Eskimo of Greenland build a small snow hut, the entrance of which is closed as death approaches that the inmate may pass away alone. Dr. Franz Boas relates that a young girl once sent for him from such a lodging a few hours before her end, to ask for some tobacco and bread, that she might take them to her mother who had died only a few weeks before. Or the connection between the dead man and his former dwelling may be severed by burning down the hut and forsaking the locality, even though (as among the Sakais of the Malay peninsula) the coming crop of tapioca or sugar-cane should be lost by departure. Or strong measures may be taken with the corpse by thrashing it to hasten the ejection of the soul; the walls of the death-chamber may be beaten with sticks to drive it away; or a professional functionary may be invoked with his broom to sweep it out. And when the body has been carried forth, precautions must be taken to prevent the spirit from finding its way back, and barriers erected against its return. Only occasionally, as in ancient Athens, was burial permitted in the house, where the venerated dead could still protect and bless those whom they loved.

The tomb was sometimes constructed to resemble the home and admit the members of the family together. Under the cliffs of Orvieto is an Etruscan city of the dead, where the stone houses (usually with two rooms) stand side by side in streets. The prehistoric gravemounds of Scandinavia have disclosed sepulchral burial chambers, entered by a gallery or passage, divided by large slabs of granite into alcoves or stalls, round which the dead were seated. Just so does the Eskimo of the present day arrange his dwelling. Those who had lived in caves and left their dead there, retained the usage long after they had learned to construct tents or build houses for themselves. The chief was carried to the hills, as the barrows on our own moors show, or to the mountain top, where his spirit blended perhaps with the spirit of the place and lent an additional awe to the heights; or to secure him from disturbance, as the Spanish observers noted in Columbia (S. America), a river was diverted from its course, his grave was made in its bed, and the waters, restored to their former channel, kept the secret safe.

The dream experience only provides the world of the dead with scenery and occupations resembling those of common life, with more rapidity of change and mysterious ease of transformation. But when tribes have migrated from one locality to another,—and in the vast reaches of prehistoric time such movements were incessant though slow—the various forces of association in memory, dreaming, and tradition, would connect the dead with the places of the past. Sometimes the course of travel might have lain through mountain passes, or across a river, or from beyond the sea. A journey, or a voyage was thus suggested—Samoans said of a chief that he had "sailed"; to reach the abode of the dead might need days of travel; so shoes as well as food (p. 138) must be provided, and the fires, first kindled for the warmth of the dweller in the grave below, were continued to light him on his way. On solar analogies, such as may be found in both hemispheres, the homes of the departed were often assigned to the East or West.

The brotherhood of sleep and death has always been recognised, and we still call our graveyards "cemeteries," or sleeping-places. The ancient Israelite said of his dead that he "slept with his fathers." Earth burial suggested a locality beneath the ground, vast and gloomy like some huge cave. The Mesopotamian thought of it as a city, ringed with seven walls; and even the Hebrew who pictured the underworld, Sheol, as a gigantic pit, sometimes imagined it to be approached through gates. There lay the nerveless feeble forms of the mighty ones of earth. The separate nations had their several stations allotted to them, where ghostly warriors lay dark and silent with their ghostly swords around the ghostly thrones of ghostly kings. The entry of a new comer from Babylon awoke a ghostly wonder, and ghostly voices greeted him from the dead. It is a strange contrast with the pageantry of the skies, where various races, from the Australians to the Hindus and the Greeks have seen their forefathers looking down on them as stars. So inveterate is this belief that it was found necessary to obtain a certificate from the Astronomer Royal to refute the rumour that on the night on which Browning died a new star appeared in the constellation of Orion. The Milky Way could thus be interpreted as the path of Souls, and the Aurora Borealis resolved into the Dance of the Dead.

The transfer of souls through death from one kind of life to another does not necessarily involve any moral change. The relations of earth are resumed in the new scene. The ancient Celts who placed letters to their friends on the pyre of a dead relative, or even expected to receive in the next world the repayment of loans in this, conceived existence hereafter on the same plane as the present, like the modern Chinaman who celebrates the wedding of his spirit-son with the spirit-daughter of a suitable friend, and thus brings peace to a tormented house. The spirit-land of Ibo on the lower Niger had its rivers and forests, its hills, and towns, and roads, below the ground like those above, only more gloomy. In Tuonela, the land of the dead, Finnic imagination pictured rivers of black water, with boisterous waterfalls and dangerous whirlpools, forests full of wild beasts, and fields of grain which provided the death-worm with his teeth; but it is still homely enough for Wainamoinen to find the daughter of its ruler, Tuoni, god of death, busy with her washing. The dead of the Mordvinians, a group of Ural-Altaic origin in the heart of Russia, are believed to marry and beget children as on earth. Such conceptions naturally resulted in a continuity of occupation, rank, and service. The Spanish historian, Herrera, relates that in Mexico "every great man had a priest or chaplain to perform the ceremonies of his house, and when he died the chaplain was called to serve him in the same manner, and so were his master of the household, his cup-bearer, his dwarf, the deformed people he kept, and the brothers that had served him, for they looked upon it as a piece of grandeur to be served by them, and said they were going to keep house in the other world." Yet in Mexico, as will be seen immediately, the differentiation of the future lot had already begun.

The chief is usually sure of admission into high society in the next world. The Maori paradise was a paradise of the aristocracy; heroes and men of lofty lineage went to the skies. But common souls, in passing from one division to another of the New Zealand Hades, lost a little of their vitality each time, until at last they died outright. Polynesian fancy sometimes mingled the seen and the unseen in strange juxtaposition. The Fijian route to the world beyond, Mbulu, lay through a real town with ordinary inhabitants. But it had also an invisible portion, where dwelt the family of Samuyalo who held inquest on departed spirits. If this trial was surmounted, a second judgment awaited them at the hands of Ndengei, by which they were assigned to one or other of the divisions of the underworld. A great chief who had destroyed many towns and slain many in war, passed to Mburotu, where amid pleasant glades the occupants lived in families and planted and fought. But bachelors, those who had killed no enemy, or would not have their ears bored, women who refused to be tatooed, and generally those who had not lived so as to please the gods, were doomed to various forms of penal suffering and degradation.

Courage and daring are of immense social importance, and are among the most important elements in primitive virtue. Strength, valour, skill in war and hunting, lift men into leadership, and the pre-eminence won here is retained hereafter. But these qualities are not limited to chiefs. The happy land of the Greenlanders, Torngarsuk, received the valiant workers, men who had taken many whales and seals, borne much hardship, and been drowned at sea, and women who had died in childbirth. A mild and unwarlike tribe in Guatemala might be persuaded that to die by any other than a natural death was to forfeit all hope of life hereafter, the bodies of the slain being left to the vultures and wild beasts. On the other hand, the Nicaraguan Aztecs declared that the shades of those who died in their beds went downwards till they came to nought; while those who fell in battle for their country passed to the East, to the rising of the sun.

Such was the destiny, also, of the Mexican warriors, who daily climbed to the zenith by the sun's side with shouts of joy, and there resigned their charge to the celestial women, who had given their lives in childbed. Merchants, too, were in the procession, who had faced risk and peril and died upon their journeys. But this privilege tasted only four years, when they became birds of beautiful plumage in the celestial gardens. In the far East, in the abode of Tlaloc, god of waters, were those who had died by lightning or at sea, sufferers from various diseases, and children who had been sacrificed to the water-deities. These last, after a happy time, were born again; the rest passed in due course to the underworld of Mictlan in the far north, "a most obscure land, where light cometh not, and whence none can ever return." There the rich were still rich, and the slaves still slaves. But their term was short. Mictlan had nine divisions, and at the end of the fourth year the spirit reached the ninth and ceased to be.

This curious distribution has little moral significance, save for its recognition of valour, as in the Teutonic welcome of the warrior into Valhalla, or of social service, as in the case of those who give their lives for the community, the merchant like the Greenland whaler, or the mothers who did not survive their labour. But the beginnings of ethical discrimination sometimes present themselves in very much more simply organised communities. A rude social justice expresses itself in the belief of the Kaupuis of Assam that a murdered man shall have his murderer for his slave in the next life. The Chippeways predict that the souls of the wicked will be pursued by phantoms of the persons they have injured; and horses and dogs which have been ill-treated will torment their tormentors. Murder, theft, lying, adultery, draw down a singular chastisement in the Banks Islands. The spirits of the dead assemble on the road to Panoi, when each fresh comer is torn to pieces and put together again. Then the injured man has his chance. He seizes a part of the dismembered soul, so that it cannot be reconstructed, or at least suffers permanent mutilation. No judge presides over the process, no law regulates it; punishment is still a private affair. But the entry into the new life is not unconditional. The American Choctaws conceived their dead to journey to the east, till they reached the summit of a hill. There a long pine-trunk, smooth and slippery, stretched over the river of death below to the next hill-top. The just passed over safely and entered paradise, the wicked fell off into the stream beneath. It was a self-acting test, which needed not the prior ordeal of the Avestan balance under Mithra and Rashnu at the Chinvat bridge (p. 9).

Sometimes a new religious motive is more or less plainly apparent. Even the rude Fijian award depended in some way on the satisfaction of the gods. The Tonga Islanders were more explicit; neglect of the gods and failure to present due offerings would involve penalties hereafter. The sun-worshipping people of Achalaque in Florida placed men of good life and pious service and charity to the poor in the sky as stars, while the wicked languished in misery among mountain precipices and wild beasts. Two centuries ago Bosnian heard some of the negroes on the Guinea coast tell of a river in the heart of the land where they would be asked by the divine judge if they had duly kept the holy days, abstained from forbidden meats, and maintained their oaths inviolate, and those who could not answer rightly would be drowned. Such anticipations really introduce a fresh principle. Above the tribal morality, the custom of the clan, rises an obligation of no obvious and immediate use; even ritual practice, the observance of special seasons, or of proper taboos, the offering of prescribed sacrifice, may create new standards of order in conformity with a higher will. They supply the groundwork on which the prophet may build the temple of the ideal.

The ancient Semitic cultures formulated no general doctrine of immortality in the higher sense of the word. Faint traces of a hope of resurrection appear here and there in Babylonian texts; but there is no judgment beyond the grave; the chastisements of the gods arrive in this life; and it is only occasionally that the fellowship of heaven becomes the privilege of the great. In Israel the higher prophecy from Amos onward interprets "Yahweh's day" as a day of doom instead of victory; but the divine judgment would alight on the whole people, and would be realised in no future life but in some overwhelming national catastrophe. In Egypt the destiny of the dead was already individualised. Around it gathered the solemnities of the Osirian judgment-seat (p. 8); the ritual and the ethical demands of the forty-two assessors show the moral tests advancing through the ceremonial. The believer who passed safely through the ordeal of the balance and was duly fortified with the proper spells, was mystically identified with Osiris as the "justified," and different texts present different types of future bliss. He might find a home in the fields of Ialu, where numerous servants answered to his call, and he feasted on the magic corn. Or a fresh form might be provided for him, when he was washed with pure water at the meshken or place of new birth. Mysterious transformations assimilated him with various gods; or he was admitted on to the sun-bark among the worshippers of Rê, and fed on his words. But the guilty souls were subjected to unspeakable torments; there were magistrates to measure the duration of those appointed for extinction, and at the allotted time they were destroyed.

Egypt, thought Herodotus, had been the teacher of immortality to Greece. The statement is at least interesting as a sign that in the traveller's view the Hellenic faith of his day possessed some analogies with the Egyptian. The ethical element in it, at any rate, was gaining more and more force. In Homer Hades, who is after all another form of Zeus in the underworld, is sovereign, but not judge, of the nether realm. The Erinnyes, who are originally ghosts of the dead, inflict their punishments mostly in the life of earth; only for broken oaths is penalty imposed below; and Tartarus, in the lowest deep, is reserved for the giant Titans who had challenged the majesty of heaven. In the stony asphodel meadow Achilles is but a shade among the rest; if Menelaus is admitted to the Elysian plain, it is no superior valour but aristocratic connection which wins him his place. Rare is the allusion to a judgment; the tribunal of Minos, son of Zeus, may be the moralising addition of some later bard.

But in the fifth century B.C. fresh influences are at work. Pythagoras has founded his communities, half philosophical, half religious. The higher thought has become markedly monotheistic, and Orphism with its rude sacrament (p. 147) has helped to develop conceptions of fellowship with deity which made new hopes for the future possible. So Pindar, nearest of kin among Greek poets to the prophetio voices of Israel, emphasises the retributive government of God. Man may be nothing more than "a dream of a shadow," nevertheless he is not too insignificant to escape the dooms of heaven upon his guilt, and if there is requital for evil there are also happy islands for the blest. The ethical leaven is already powerfully at work. The language of Cebes and Simmias in Plato's dialogue of the Phædo shows, however, that the belief was by no means universal; and the beautiful sepulchral reliefs at Athens give no hint of that august tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Æacus, which Plato pictures as engaged in judging souls.

But the great mysteries of Eleusis certainly fostered the hope of immortality. The conviction grew stronger that the initiated would have a happier lot in the life to come, so that Diogenes sarcastically inquired whether an initiated robber would be better off than an uninitiated honest man. The inscriptions of the last centuries before our era show nothing like the consensus of feeling in an Egyptian cemetery or a modern English graveyard. The soul is piously committed to the ether, or, if there be rewards in the realm below, is confided to Persephonê; or it is reverently placed among the stars, in the councils of the immortals, or in the home of the gods. Such were the popular conventions. Philosophical speculation gathered round the idea of transmigration, or pleaded for at least a continuance of consciousness till the great conflagration which should end the world; while Orphic religion held out the hope that the soul, entangled in this earthly scene, might after long discipline rise once more to its home with God.

The theories of continuance all assume that the world will go upon its usual way. Generation will follow generation in this life, but the lower culture does not ask what will happen in the next. It cannot take big time-surveys, like the Egyptian "millions of years" or the Hebrew "ages of ages." The future will be like the present, as the present has been like the past. Imagination can conceive a beginning, it does not at first advance to an end. But the development of astronomy in Babylonia, with the discovery of regular periodicities in Nature, seems to have suggested the idea of a great World-Year, an immense period beginning with creation, which would be brought to an end by some great catastrophe such as flood or fire. The flood had already taken place. Traditions of it floated to India and Greece; they were incorporated in ancient Hebrew story. After another immense revolution of time would there be a similar close? There is some evidence that this was part of Babylonian teaching in the days of Berosus, in the middle of the third century B.C. (p. 39), but it has not yet been discovered in the ancient cuneiform texts. The next agency of dissolution would be heat. It was part of early Buddhist speculation, and lodged itself in Indian thought; and from the days of Pythagoras, in the sixth century B.C., it formed part of the Greek philosophical outlook in different schools towards the "last things." When the next periodic destruction took place, what would happen? According to one answer the restoration of all things would set in, and the entire cycle would be repeated over again. Eudemus, a pupil of Aristotle, is said to have observed in one of his lectures that if the Pythagoreans were to be trusted, his audience would have the privilege of hearing him again: "You will be sitting there in the same way, and I shall be telling you my story, holding my little stick, and everything else will go on the same."

This mechanical reproduction of a whole previous age down to its minutest details did not, however, really engage the higher Greek thought. That was chiefly occupied with the abiding contrast between that which is and that which appears; how could the ultimate Unity present itself in such infinite diversity? what was the relation of the world of change and succession to the enduring substance that lay behind? In such questions man and his destiny had but a small share. Pindar might sing how "God accomplisheth all ends according to his wish; God who overtaketh the winged eagle and outstrippeth the dolphin of the sea, and layeth low many a mortal in his haughtiness, while to others he giveth glory unspeakable: if any man expect that in doing ought he shall be unseen of God, he erreth." The tragedians might wrestle with dark problems of crime and fate; and poetry and philosophy might agree in presenting the world as the scene of a divine thought, the manifestation of a divine energy. Regularities, fixities, invariable successions, pointed to a definite order, divinely maintained. But to what did it lead? What place was there in it for man? His future might be moralised; the unethical Hades of Homer might be replaced by the judgment-scenes of Plato; but no world-process is suggested for the elimination of evil or the fulfilment of any divine end. Plato might throw out the hint that Delphi should become the interpreter of religion to all mankind; the mysteries might be opened to slave as well as freeman, and might even admit those who were not of Hellenic race; but there were no prophet's glimpses of a purpose leading to some all-embracing goal. Zeus orders all as he wills. Individuals are punished, but the misdeeds, like the sufferings or sorrows of man, are lost in the harmonious majesty of the Whole.

Indian thought, as has been already indicated, worked out a complete identification of life with the moral order by means of the doctrine of the Deed (p. 217). The scheme of transmigration took up the earlier ideas of the elder thinkers. The Vedic poets had told of the land of Yama, who was sometimes presented as the first man to die and enter the heavenly world. In one hymn he is associated with Varuna in the highest heaven, where the pious live from age to age, and are sometimes identified with the sun's rays or the stars. There kindred were gathered, and warriors and poets received their reward, and the devout realised the object of their prayers; and Yama sat under a tree of goodly leaves, drinking with the gods the life-giving soma-juice, father and master of the house, tending the heavenly sires. Deep below was the dark pit for those who would not sacrifice to Indra, or persecuted his worshippers. There were fiends of various kinds to torment the wicked, the untruthful, or the seducer. But there are no traces of any specific judgment, with definite awards of heaven and hell. In the later scheme of life founded on the conception of Karma such a tribunal might seem unnecessary: the product of the past works out its own result. But as Buddhist folklore shows, popular theology required the pronouncement of a judge, and Yama took his place as Lord of hell and King of Righteousness.

By what channels the doctrine of successive world-ages entered Hindu religion cannot be definitely determined. Early Buddhist teaching assumes it as familiar, though it is not included in the prior Brahmanical literature; and minutely describes the great conflagration which will consume the universe through the heat engendered by the appearance of seven suns. Karma, however, could not be destroyed. No fire could burn it, nor could the other agencies of dissolution, like water or wind, drown or disperse it. It must proceed unerringly to its results. These might be for a time suspended, they could not be frustrated for ever. Their energies lay latent, waiting their opportunity. So a new world would arise to provide the means and the field for their operation, and from age to age, through seasons of dissolution and restoration, with intervals of incalculable time, the endless process would fulfil its round. This would be no literal repetition. The history of a new world-age would be quite fresh, for the potencies of Karma were of infinite variety, and were for ever being re-shaped, cancelled, or extended by the action of the new personalities—divine, human, demonic—(reincarnation might also take place in animal or plant)—in which they were embodied. But the immense series led to nothing. Buddhist imagination filled the universe with worlds, each with its own systems of heaven and hell, and projected æons upon æons into immeasurable time, but the sequence pointed to no goal, for what could arrest the inexorable succession? Was there any escape from its law?

To that question different answers were returned by different teachers. The forest-sages had already pleaded for the recognition of the identity of the self within the heart with the Universal Self (p. 60). There was the path by which the phenomenal scene could be transcended, and the soul brought into its true fellowship with the Infinite Being, Intelligence, and Joy. But inasmuch as this deliverance was only realised by a few, and could not be self-wrought, it must be the result of a divine election; they only could attain it whom the Self chose as his own. With its repudiation of all ontological ideas of soul, or substance, or universal Self, early Buddhism threw the whole task of achieving emancipation on the individual, who must himself win the higher insight and discipline his character with no aid but that of the Teacher and his example. The passion for the salvation of the world might generate an unexampled missionary activity, transcending all bounds of caste and race. It might express itself in singularly comprehensive vows such as these, which were carried from China to Japan in the seventh century A.D., and are still part of Buddhist devotion: "There are beings without limit, let me take the vow to take them all unto the further shore: there are depravities without number, let me take the vow to extinguish them all: there are truths without end, let me take the vow to know them all: there is the way of Buddha without comparison, let me make the vow to accomplish it." But only the wisdom of Amida, All-Merciful and All-Potent (p. 17), could avail to harmonise the issues of Karma with the operations of grace, and carry the world-process to the goal of universal salvation.

The theologians and philosophers of India might devise various methods for the believer's escape from the round of re-births; but on the ecclesiastical side they never surmounted the practical limitation of nationality, or sought to address themselves to the world at large; while the mystics who more easily passed the bounds of race usually lacked the aggressive energy which demanded the conquest and suppression of evil and the assurance of the victory of good. It was reserved for the Persian thinkers, led by Zarathustra, to work out a scheme for the ultimate overthrow of the power of "the Lie" (p. 211). Egyptian theology had impersonated the forces of evil in Set. There were the constant oppositions of darkness and light, of sickness and health, of the desert against fertility, of drought against the Nile, of foreign lands against Egypt. Mythically, the antagonism between Set and his brother Osiris was continued by Isis' son Horus. It was renewed again and again, and Set was for ever defeated, yet always returned afresh to the strife. But no demand was raised for his elimination. Osiris had passed into the land of Amenti, where Set could trouble him no more. And apparently the later identification of the deceased with Osiris meant that for him, too, the powers of death and evil were overcome. But this did not affect Set's activity in the existing scene, where the strife continued over the survivors day by day. The insight of the Iranian prophet could not admit this division of spheres, and demanded not only new heavens, but also a new earth, where evil should have no more power, and the Righteous Order, the Good Mind, the Bounteous Spirit, and the rest of the Immortals, should be the unchallenged ministers of Ahura's rule.

The history of the world, accordingly, was ultimately arranged in four periods of three thousand years each. The life of Zarathustra closed the third. At the end of the fourth the great era of the Frasho-kereti, the entry into a new age and a new scene, would arrive. It would be preceded at the close of each millennial series by the advent of a deliverer, wondrously born of Zarathustra's seed. During the third of these, the last of the whole twelve, the ancient serpent would be loosed to ravage Ahura Mazda's good creation. But the Saoshyant or "Saviour," the greatest of the three successors of the prophet, would bring about the general resurrection. From the Home of Song and from the hells of evil thought and word and deed the spirits of the dead would resume their bodies. Families would be reunited in preparation for the last purifying pain. For a mighty conflagration would take place; the mountains would be dissolved with fervent heat, and the whole multitude of the human race would be overflowed by the molten metal for three days. The righteous would pass through it like a bath of milk; the evil would be purged of the last impulses to sin. Saoshyant and his helpers would dispense the drink of immortality, and the final conflict with the powers of evil would begin. Añra Mainyu, the great Serpent, with all their satellites and the multitude of the demonic hosts, should be finally driven into hell and consumed in the cleansing flame; and hell itself should be "brought back for the enlargement of the world."

The Iranian Apocalypse is not the only presentation of conflict and victory in the widespread Indo-Germanic group. The Old Teutonic religion produced its Volospa, the seer's high song of creation and the overthrow of evil. Here is in brief the story of the great world-drama, the degeneracy of man, the conflicts of the gods. The universe slowly surges to its end; there are portents in the sky, disorders on the earth, till the whole frame of things dissolves and all goes up in flame. But a new vision dawns: "I behold earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep; the fields shall yield unsown; all evil shall be amended; Balder shall come back. I see a hall, brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, standing on Gem-lea. The righteous shall dwell therein and live in bliss for ever. The Powerful One comes to hold high judgment, the Mighty One from above who rules over all, and the dark dragon who flies over the earth with corpses on his wings is driven from the scene and slinks away." There are possibly Christian touches here and there, but the substantial independence of the poet seems assured.

Above the theories of world-continuance and world-cycles must be ranked those of a world-goal, which imply more or less clearly the conception of a world-purpose. The supreme expression of this in religious literature is found in the Christian Bible. The prophecy of Zarathustra belonged to the same high ethical order as that of Israel. How much the Apocalyptic hopes of the later Judaism were stimulated by contact with Persian thought cannot be precisely defined: the estimates of careful scholars differ. But there is no doubt whatever of the dependence of Christianity upon Jewish Messianic expectation. The title of its founder, Christ, is the Greek equivalent of the Jewish term Messiah, or "Anointed." Its pictures of human destiny, of resurrection, of judgment, of one world where the righteous shine like the sun, and another full of fire that is not quenched, are pictures drawn by Jewish hands. Its promises of the Advent of the Son of Man in clouds of glory from the sky, who shall summon the nations to his great assize, are couched in the language of earlier Jewish books. For one religion builds upon another, and must use the speech of its country and its time. Its forms must, therefore, necessarily change from age to age, as the advance of knowledge and the widening of experience suggest new problems and call for fresh solutions. But it will always embody man's highest thought concerning the mysteries that surround him, and will express his finest attitude to life. Its beliefs may be gradually modified; its specific institutions may lose their power; but history shows it to be among the most permanent of social forces, and the most effective agent for the slow elevation of the race.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Out of the immense literature produced since Max Müller's Essay on Comparative Mythology (1856) only a small number of the most important books can be here named, and the list is limited to works in English. Superior figures attached to titles indicate the edition. [Transcriber's note: the superscripted edition numbers have been replaced with the edition in brackets.]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.—Tylor, Primitive Culture (4th ed.) (2 vols. 1903); Max Müller, Introd. to the Science of Religion (1873), Hibbert Lectures (1878), Gifford Lectures (4 vols. 1889-93); W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (2nd ed.) (1902); J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (3rd editioin) (now in course of publication); A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion (2nd ed.) (2 vols. 1899), The Making of Religion (2nd ed.) (1900), Magic and Religion (1901); Goblet d'Alviella, Origin and Growth of the Conception of God (Hibbert Lectures, 1892); Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion (2 vols. 1897); F. B. Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion (2nd ed.) (1902); Crawley, The Mystic Rose (1902), The Tree of Life (1905); Farnell, The Evolution of Religion (1905); Westermaarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906), 2 vols.; Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906), 2 vols.; Marett, The Threshold of Religion (1909).

RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE.—Ratzel, The History of Mankind, tr. Butler (1896), 3 vols.; Turner, Samoa (1884); Codrington, Melanesians (1891); A. B. Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples (1890); Yoruba-speaking Peoples (1894); Tshi-speaking Peoples (1897); Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (2 vols. 1896); Miss M. H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (1898), West African Studies (1899); Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904); Howitt, Native Tribes of South-eastern Australia (1904); Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind (1906); Roscoe, The Baganda, their Customs and Beliefs (1911); Brinton, Myths of the New World (2nd ed.) (1878); McClintock, The Old North Trail (1910); Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

For the higher religions a few of the best English introductions are here named, in addition to the copious collection of materials in the Sacred Books of the East (50 vols.).

BABYLONIA: Sayce, Hibbert Lectures (1887), Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (1902); Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898), American Lectures.

CELTS: Rhys, Hibbert Lectures (1886); Macculloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (1911).

CHINA: Legge, Chinese Classics (2nd ed.) (1893), 5 vols. (in 8 parts); de Groot, The Religious System of China (1892-1910), 6 vols.: already published, The Religion of the Chinese (1910).

CHRISTIANITY (primitive): Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity (1903), 2 vols.; Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity (1906), 4 vols. Fuller bibliography in Encycl. Brit., (11th ed.) by G. W. Knox.

EGYPT: Renouf, Hibbert Lectures (1879); Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation (1894); Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (1902); Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion (1907); Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (1911), 2 vols.

GREECE: Farnell, Cults of the Greek States (1896-1909), 5 vols., Greece and Babylon (1911), Higher Aspects of Greek Religion (1912); Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), Themis (1912); Sir W. M. Ramsay, in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Greece and Asia Minor."

INDIA: Barth, Religions of India (1882); Hopkins, Religions of India (1895). VEDIC: Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (1897) in Bühler's Grundriss; Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda (1909). For BUDDHISM, see Mrs. Rhys Davids' vol. in this series. HINDUISM: Monieu Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (1883).

ISRAEL: Kuenen, Religion of Israel (1874), 3 vols.; Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures (1892); Kautzsch, in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Israel." Kent, Hist. of the Hebrew People, 2 vols. (1890-7); Hist. of the Jewish People (1899); Addis, Hebrew Religion (1906); Marti, Religion of the Old Testament (1907).

JAINS: Jacobi in Sacred Books of the East, vols. xxii (1884) and xlv (1895); Bühler, On the Indian Sect of the Jainas (1904).

JAPAN: The Nihongi, tr. Aston (1896), 2 vols.; Aston, Shinto (1905); papers in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Griffis, The Religions of Japan (4th ed.) (1904, New York); Knox, Development of Religion in Japan (1907); Tada Kanai, The Praises of Amida, tr. Lloyd (1907, Tokyo).

MEXICO AND PERU: Reville, Hibbert Lectures (1884); Payne, History of the New World called America (1892), 2 vols.

MOHAMMEDANISM: see Prof. Margoliouth's vol. in this series.

PERSIA: Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of ancient Iran (1899); Sanjana, Zarathushtra and Zarathushtrianism in the Avesta (1906, Leipzig); Moulton, Early Religious Poetry of Persia (1911).

ROME: W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals, 1899, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911); Glover, Studies in Virgil, 1904; Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (1904); Carter, The Religion of Numa (1906), The Religious Life of Ancient Rome (1912); Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (1911), Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (1912).

SIKHS: Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion (1909), 6 vols.

TEUTONS: Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), 2 vols.; Grimm, tr. Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology (1900), 4 vols.; Chantepie de la Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons (1902).

Small popular volumes in the series on "Non-Christian Religious Systems" (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), and more recently in Constable's series, "Religions Ancient and Modern." Valuable articles in Hastings' Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, and in Encyclopædia Britannica.

INDEX

Ādi-Granth, the, 188

Aditi, 155

Adonis, 119

Æschylus, 130

Æsculapius, 44, 127, 180, 221

Africa, 111, 113 f., 140, 148, 163, 182, 203

Agni, 34, 94

Ahriman (Añra Mainyu), 155, 212, 248

Ahura Mazda, 131, 211 f., 248

Aius Locutius, 126

Akhnaton, 129

"All-gods," the, 129

American Indians, North, 57, 81, 110, 173, 235

Amida (Amitâbha), 16 ff., 132, 246

Animism, 55, 59

Annam, 83

Apollo, 123, 127, 145, 159, 173, 181, 183

Artemis, 127

Asceticism, 168

Asha, 216, 221

Asista, 148

Athena, 123, 127, 173

Athens, 228

Attis, 119

Augury, 178

Augustine, St., 35, 42, 52

Augustus, 125

Australia, 33, 75, 78 f., 86, 110, 114 f., 149, 162, 171, 199, 202

Avalokiteçvara, 131, 154

Awona-wilona, 111

Bab, the, 70, 188

Babylonia, 39, 58, 102, 109, 145, 151, 171, 178, 205, 209, 237, 240

Baiame, 149, 171

Balder, 210, 249

Baptism, rites of, 160

Berosus, 39, 241

Bhagavad-Gītā, the, 128

Bhakti, 157

Bible, the, 194

Birth, deities and rites of, 121, 159

Blackfoot Indians, the, 35, 167

Book of the Dead, the, 186

Brahma, 60, 156

Brahmā, 60, 62, 129, 158

Brāhmanas, the, 189, 217

Brahmanaspati, 156

Brahmanical sacrifice, 143

Brahmanism, 24, 128

Buddha, the future, 159. Cp. Gotama

Buddhism, 15, 24, 61, 65, 131, 153, 155, 219, 241, 244 f.

Buddhist Scriptures, 190

Bjunjil, 171

Celts, the, 27, 41, 104, 142, 231

Chemosh, 107

China, 58, 63, 65, 68, 87, 90, 95, 125, 150, 178, 214, 231

Chinese Classics, 187

Christianity, 187, 225, 250

Chrysippus, 184

Cicero, 42, 46

Çiva, 62, 128 f.

Classification of religions, 220

Clement of Alexandria, 50 f.

Confucius, 27 f., 63, 96

Corea, 66

Creation-myths, 110

Cybelê, 40

Dahomey, 138

Dance, the sacred, 166

Daramulun, 162, 171

Dead, cultus of the, 20, 90, 137 ff.

Death, 121

Delphi, 182, 221, 242

Demeter, 40, 119, 164

Deng-deet, 148

Dionysos, 40, 119, 127, 147

Divination, 178

Dreams, 86, 179, 229

Druzes, the, 188

Ea, 113, 172

Earth, mother, 59, 95, 97, 173

Eating the god, 146

Edda, the, 27, 186

Egypt, 7, 39, 46, 102, 109, 113, 124, 129, 151 f., 171 f., 209, 213, 227, 237 f., 246

Eleusinian Mysteries, 164, 239

Entheos, 147

Erinnyes, the, 238

Eskimo, the, 228 f., 233

Etruscans, the, 178, 229

Euahlayi, the, 149

Euripides, 48, 151

Eusebius, 39, 52

Fijians, the, 197, 233

Finnic peoples, the, 104, 231

First-borns sacrificed, 142

Florida, 236

Food-deities, 115 ff.

Gabriel, 131

Gāthās, the, 191, 221

Genius, the, 123

Gold Coast negroes, 107, 138, 144, 197

Gotama, 15, 127, 219

Greece, 37, 90, 121 f., 145, 161

Hades, 238

Hammurabi, 172

Heaven and Earth, 63, 94 ff., 213 ff.

Hebrews, the, 140. See Israel.

Heracleides, 184

Heracleitus, 48, 50

Herbert, Lord, 31

Hermes, 9 f., 181

Herodotus, 26, 38, 238

Hesiod, 182, 186, 213

Hestia, 122

Hierography, Hierology, Hierosophy, 29 f.

Hinduism, 62

Hirata, 92 f., 135

Homer, 181 f., 186, 238, 242

Homeric Hymn, 164

Huitzilopochtli, 147

Incubation, 180

India, 58, 90, 127, 139, 141

Indra, 34, 155, 177

Initiation ceremonies, 161 ff.

Irish sacrificed first-borns, 142

Isis, 39 ff., 51, 109, 127, 165

Islam. See Mohammedanism.

Israel, 201, 222, 230, 237, 249

Jacob, 168

Jains, the, 61, 188

Japan, 63, 66, 91, 125, 135, 138 f., 152, 246

Jephthah, 107

Jeremiah, 182

Jews, the, 39, 58. See Israel.

Judaism, 187, 223, 249

Judgment after death, 7 ff., 233 ff.

Jumala, 105

Juno, 145

Jupiter, 35, 109, 130, 145

Justin the Martyr, 49

Kabir, 157, 188

Kalevala, the, 27, 57, 186

Kami, the, 64, 91 ff., 135

Karma, 60, 217, 219, 243 ff.

Kings, as divine, 124

Koran, the, 13, 69, 155, 187, 192 f.

Krishna, 128

Kwan-yin, 132, 154

Lao-Tsze, 64, 214 f.

Lares, the, 123

Lesa, 140

Lessing, 22

Lî Chî, the, 150

Life after Death, 226 ff.

Life, in the universe, 83

Logos, the, 47 f., 50, 53

Loki, 210

Lot, the, 178

Lucretius, 42, 44

Lycurgus, 173

Maāt, 214

Magic, 75 ff., 120, 142, 148, 154

Mahābhārata, the, 190

Mama Ogllo, 174

Mana, 80, 85, 200

Manco Capac, 174

Manetho, 39

Manitou, 81

Manu, 190

Marcian Songs, 184

Marduk, 113, 140

Mawu, 198

Melanesia, 139, 164

Messiah, the, 250

Mêtis, 176

Mexico, 57, 117, 147, 161, 232, 234

Michabo, 173

Michael, 7, 9 f., 131

Migration, 229

Minerva, 109, 145

Minos, 44, 173

Minucius Felix, 49

Mithra, 9, 52, 166, 236

Mitra, 34, 155

Mohammed, 12 f., 67 f., 187, 193

Mohammedanism, 24, 26, 58, 63, 67, 155

Morality, 135, 195 ff.

Moses, 222

"Mothers," 104

Motowori, 92

Mulungu, 82

Musæus, 181, 183

Muses, the, 181

Mysteries, 51, 164 ff., 239

Mythology, 174 ff.

Nānak, 62

New Zealand, 232

Nezahuatl, 130

Niger, tribes of Lower, 150, 198, 231

Noah's sacrifice, 141

Norns, the, 161

Numa, 44 f., 173

Nurrundere, 171

Nyongmo, 113

Oannes, 171

Odin, 181, 210

Omophagy, 147

Onomacritus, 183

Oracles, 182 ff.

Ordeals, 179

Orenda, 81

Orpheus, 181

Orphism, 147, 165, 239 f.

Osiris, 8, 109, 119, 172, 209, 237, 247

Pāchacāmac, 152

Pan, 44, 153

"Parasites," 145

Parsees, the, 58

Pausanias, 41, 53

Penates, 123, 145

Persephonê, 40, 119, 240

Peru, 57, 108, 117, 174

Petronius Arbiter, 22

Pindar, 44, 48, 153, 213, 239, 242

Plato, 38, 45 f., 48 f., 133, 178, 182, 239, 242

Plutarch, 41, 44

Polydæmonistic religions, 55

Polynesia, 112, 164

Prajāpati, 12, 143 f.

Prayer, 35, 133, 148 ff.

Prometheus, 137

Pythagoras, 38

Pythagoreans, 220, 239 f.

Quetzalcoatl, 173

Rain-making, 54

Rameses, 108

Rashnu, 9, 236

Religio, 42

Rig Veda, 10 f., 59. See Veda.

Rita, 216

Rites of passage, 159

Roman emperor, 124

Rome, 41, 52, 90, 109, 123, 131, 145, 161, 178, 201

Sabazius, 165

Sacred Books, 185 ff.

Sacrifice, 133, 136 ff.

Samuel, 161

Saoshyant, 248

Sarapis, 39, 146

Sâtân, the, 223

Scandinavia, 209, 229

Scape-goat, in Israel, 206

Schleiermacher, 23

Scriptures, 189 ff.

Self, doctrine of the, 85 ff.

Self, the Universal, 60, 245

Semites, the, 142

Set, 209

Shamash, 151, 172

Shang Tî, 97, 100

Sheol, 230

Shin, the, 95, 100

Shinto, 63, 91, 135, 187, 207

Sibylline books, 184

Sīkhs, the, 62, 188

Sin, communicable and removable, 204 ff.

Sin (moon-god), 151

Snake-dance, 167

Socrates, 50, 133, 153

Sophocles, 44

Sotêr (saviour, etc.), 124 f., 127

Spirits, 54, 102

Stars, the dead as, 231, 240, 243

Stoics, the, 178

Sūfiism, 70

Sun-dance, 34, 167

Syrians, the, 142

Taaroa, 112

Taboo, 200 ff.

Tammuz, 119

Tao, the, 215

Taoism, 65, 67, 187

Tertullian, 51, 124

Tezcatlipoca, 147

Thales, 37, 213

Thargelia, the, 206

Themis, 118, 213

Thor, 210

Thoth, 8, 152

Tibet, 66

Time, 143

Todas, the, 33, 148

Totemism, 55

Transmigration, 61, 218

Triads, 109

Trimurti, 129

Truth, goddesses of, 8

Tutanus Rediculus, 126

Ukko, 105

Universal Religions, 70

Valhalla, 235

Varro, 42

Varuna, 34, 106, 151, 155 f., 211, 243

Veda, the, 136, 142, 151, 155, 163, 177, 189, 205, 215, 243

Vegetation-gods, 118 ff.

Vesta, 122 f.

Vishnu, 62, 128 f., 158, 190

Volospa, the, 186, 248

Votan, 174

Vows, 168

Wäinamöinen, 181, 232

Wakanda, 81

World-year, 240

Xavier, Francis, 86

Yahweh, 107, 144, 161, 168, 222

Yama, 121, 243 f.

Yang and Yin, 95, 120 f.

Zaleucus, 44, 173

Zarathustra (Zoroaster), 38, 44, 58, 131, 163, 187, 201, 221, 246 f.

Zend Avesta, the, 187, 191 f., 211

Zeus, 103, 106, 109, 127, 153, 173, 176, 181, 213, 238, 243

Zi (Babylonian), 102

Zuñis, the, 83, 111

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