Note 202.1 — Chapter XI · The Religious Temperament of the Eastern and Western Peoples.
Reading edition
The evidence here quoted justifies us in attributing fanaticism to the religious temper of Babylonia and Assyria; not because the wars were evangelising, undertaken in the service of religion, but because the savage cruelty that accompanied them is deemed, as it is in the early Hebraic view, acceptable to the national gods. The idea of divine mercy is potent in the liturgies; but neither morality nor religion would appear to have inculcated any mercy towards the alien foe; and this lack of moral sympathy may be termed a passive fanaticism. The same fanatic temper might be traced in the savagery of the punishments for offences against the State-religion, and was reflected also at times in the legal code.202.1