In Babylonia, the Sumerians thought of the dead as going to a land below the earth whence there was no return, though some semi-divine heroes, like Engidu and Enmeduranki, might be spared the common lot and translated to be with the gods, and a Gilgamesh might find his way thither. Their mythical lore and astro nomical observations furnished Akkadians, Amorites, Arammans and Chaldwans with ma terial for later speculation. But even these peoples do not seem to have developed any new type of thought concerning the future of the individual. While the growth of a peculiar astrological system, perhaps already in the Kassite period, may here and there have sug gested the idea of the soul rising to life again, and apparently led to the conception of the great cosmic year, there is 'as yet no unmis takable evidence either that the inhabitants of Babylonia, Assyria and Mesopotamia before the Persian period became deeply concerned about existence after death, or considered in tensely the future of the nation beyond some immediate emergency, or transferred the myth ical imagery from the beginning to the end of the world. This was subsequently done in Syria. But even there the Hebrew writings reveal for long periods substantially the same ideas. The soul passes at death to a subter ranean Sheol where there is no moral distinc tion. Only exceptionally an Enoch or Elijah may escape the universal fate and be translated. But the ethical fervor and insight of the great prophets, men like Amos and Hosea, Isaiah, Micah and Jeremiah, brought to the fore a con ception of the nation as having a spiritual function, independent of the maintenance of the popular religious cult and the changing fortunes of the state. The extraordinary longevity of the Davidic dynasty tended to raise the expectation of a return of political independence and power under a scion of the old line. In some circles the thought, so touch ingly expressed in the book of Job, that, from a longing for the work of his hands, the Creator might bring man back again from Sheol seems to have been entertained, though the author of that great poem resolutely brushes aside this *hope of man.* But the way was prepared for a new growth of eschatology through contact with Persian thought.
The Aryans of the Iranian plateau and India followed primitive tendencies into different di rections. A religious practice of promptly re turning the body to the various elements, rather than of preserving it, in connection with a grow ing demand for future retribution, seems to have led the former to the view that the body would ultimately be restored by the elements. Al though the duty of exposing the dead and the doctrine of a physical resurrection, so strongly insisted upon in the later Avesta, are not al luded to in the Gathas, and the Achaemenian kings were buried, it is probable that they had long been maintained in certain Mazdayasnian circles, and they appear to have been known to Herodotus in the 5th and Theopompus in the 4th century B.c. That the world will pass through a final ordeal by fire is taught in the Gathas. The later Avesta divides the world year, not according to the precession of the equinoxes into 25,868 years, but into 12 millen nia, placing the advent of Zarathushtra at the end of the 9th, that of the Saoshyant, or Savior, who will raise the dead, at the end of the 12th. In India, on the other hand, the doctrine of transmigration became strongly en trenched, while a tendency toward pantheism excluded the idea of a creation and precluded the growth of eschatology. There are no last things in a pantheistic philosophy, though the infinite stretches of divine manifestation may be divided into kalpas, yaps, or epochs. The doctrine of metempsychosis renders it possible to introduce in the future life of the individ ual the nicest moral adjustments, implying both rewards and punishments in terms of character, and the possibility of rising and sinking in the scale of being according to present conduct. But this never-ending series of births and deaths may come to be felt as an intolerable evil, and Buddhism offered deliverance from the infinite wheel of existence in Nirvana. It is interesting to observe that the Aryanized people of Northern Europe not only believed in the assembly. of all souls, except those trans lated to be with the gods, in Hel's subter ranean realm, but also in punishments for the wiciced, a destruction by fire of earth's crust, a new earth people by the descendants of the pure children Lif and Lifthraser, and a new dynasty of gods. The practical character of
the Chinese has preserved ancestor worship, with its conservative influence, and given an ethical rather than metaphysical turn to phil osophical thought, discouraging speculation about the future. How similar ideas may grow up, apparently without historical contact, from the natural operation of the human mind, is strikingly shown by the fact that the ancient Peruvians and Aztecs looked forward to the destruction of the world, analogous to its de struction by various agencies in past epochs, and also, it would seem, to a future restoration of the body.
The blending of Greek thought and Oriental speculation that followed the conquests of Alex ander gave a powerful impulse to eschatology. Plato's idea of immortality, involving pre-ex istence as well as post-existence, and emphasiz ing deliverance from the prison-house of mat ter, spread in the East, while the Persian doc trine of a resurrection found its way to Syria, and in some Hellenistic circles a spiritual res urrection immediately after death was ac cepted as a compromise. The colorless exist ence in Sheol was reduced to an intermediate state between death and the final assize, while the Orphic pictures of heaven and hell helped to give a distinctive character to man's ultimate fate in the other world. Stoic philosophers set forth a theory of cycles according to which each cosmic year ends with a universal con flagration, leaving only the elements out of which a new world rises to pursue its course in exact repetition of its predecessor. Jewish apocalypses described a succession of world empires and laid down a definite program of the last things with many features ultimately borrowed from Babylonian mythology. Some times the coming kingdom of heaven was thought of as ruled directly by God; some times a theocratic ruler on earth was expected, either a high-priest °of Aaron and Israel,* as in the Zadokite Documents, or a king of the family of David and the tribe of Judah, as in the Psalter of Solomon and later works. Similar eschato logical expectations of a heaven-sent ruler and savior of the world are found in the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, the Priene inscription to Augustus, Sibylline oracles, probably of pagan origin, and elsewhere. In this atmosphere Christianity grew up. Jesus himself appears to have believed in a spiritual resurrection im mediately after death of those accounted worthy of it, cherished no ambition to become a king or in other ways to exercise lordship, and looked for the kingdom of heaven essentially as a reign of righteousness in the life of man. But the belief that He had been raised from the dead according to the Scriptures and would return upon the clouds of heaven as the Mes siah to take vengenance upon His enemies, raise the dead, and establish His ldngdom on earth affected profoundly the thought of the early Church. When the expected return was delayed, the interest gradually shifted from the idea of a righteous kingdom on earth to the perfected society in heaven, which the travelers through purgatory might be assisted in attaining, but from which the denizens of hell are forever excluded. Yet in the greatest of all apocalypses Dante gives a glimpse of the final order of things on earth at the top of the mountain of purgatory in which all external authority has at last ceased. The poet realized, however, that before this stage can be reached when a citizen of the world may be left in freedom, righteousness and sanity to ((crown and mitre" himself, a political organization of the whole human race under the same law would be nec essary, and in (De monarchia' suggested the need of an expansion of the empire to all parts in order to guarantee a general security and growth. When the Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed churches rejected the doctrine of a purgatory, they considered man's destiny to be fixed irrevocably at death. This tended to make the closing scenes of the last judgment and the resurrection of less practical importance, to eliminate the premillennial coming of Christ, and to present the millennium as a result of a long development of Christian life. Among Baptists and other radicals there was a reaction against this toward universalism or millen nianism. A great crisis in the history of na tions naturally produces a certain eschatological mood which leads some minds to seek new in terpretations of old prophecies, and others to make forecasts of the future.