Note 205.2 — Chapter XII · Eschatologic Ideas of East and West.

In the picture of the lower world presented by the two literatures, a certain general agreement is discoverable, but none closer than they reveal with the conceptions of other peoples. Both accept as an undoubted fact the continued existence of the soul after death, and both imagine this existence as shadowy, profitless, and gloomy. Both also vaguely locate the abode of the soul under the earth, with a downward entrance somewhere in the west.205.2 In both we find the idea of a nether river to be crossed, or “the waters of death”;205.3 of a porter at the gates of “hell,” and of a god and goddess as rulers of the lower world; while the mountain of the Babylonian underworld on which the gods were supposed to have been born was unknown to Hellenic mythology.205.4 Such coincidences are no criterion of a common origin of belief; for these traits recur in the death-lore of many and widely scattered races.