Religious the general form of a religion and the creations of its mythology, the theoretic doctrines which it teaches often wield an imperious sway over the lives of its votaries and decide the actions and destinies of nations. Such doctrines seem also at times to be the outgrowth of the national temperament, and their extension is largely governed by racial peculiarities. Hence they merit the attention of the ethnologist as much as that of the historian. A few of the most promi nent of these doctrines may be mentioned.
The Doctrine of a already said, the belief of a life after death is not essential to religion (see p. 144). In many, where it exists in a shadowy form, it is not an efficient motive of the religious life. A tribal religion, like that of the ancient Israelites or of the Romans, limits its thoughts and plans, its rewards and punishments, exclusively to this life. Neither Confucius nor the founder of Buddhism taught the immortality of the soul. The former when asked about it replied : "There is no present urgency about the matter. If the. dead live, you will find it out for yourself in time." Sakya Muni, though he devised a theory of trans migration, ended it in Nirvana—Nothingness—as its goal.
Ancestral the other hand, memory in waking hours and dreams during sleep persuaded men very generally that those they bad known had not passed away for ever. Their interests had not ceased and their influence was not lost. Hence arose that frequent form of early religion, ancestral worship. Although by no means what Herbert Spen cer has called it, "the universal first form of religious belief," it early and it was widespread. How early it appeared among the ancient Romans, and how deep-rooted it is to-day throughout the millions of China, need not be insisted upon. Its traces occur in the rudest races. A Tasmanian who had been taken captive and made his escape attributed the success of his flight to the aid of his father's spirit (Bonwick). The Caribs, Nanticokes, and other American tribes cleaned the bones of their ancestors and carried them along in their migrations, believing that thus the ancestral spirits would accompany and protect them. The Crees, Ivho lived on Nelson River in Canada, were accustomed to strangle their aged parents, but their most sacred fetich was a bunch of feathers called their " father's head," and which represented his spirit (Robson). Much of the
Peruvian ritual consisted in prayers and ceremonies addressed to the ancestral spirits; and the Australian kobong, the American totem, often seems to be the spirit of the traditional father of the clan.
Influence of Belief in confident belief in immortal ity possessed by some nations has profoundly modified the course of history by giving them a contempt for death which assured them the victory in conflict with those of feebler faith. The ancient Germans had a most vivid belief in the life hereafter. They knew that those who died the " spear-death " on the field of battle would at once be transported by the Valkyrie to the hall of Valhalla, where they would quaff the foaming mead with the great heroes who had gone before. So real was this expectation to them that they would lend money to be repaid when debt or and creditor should meet on the Aesar-field (Boltzmann). As Gibbon remarks, the early Christians " were animated by a contempt for their present existence and a confidence of immortality, of which the imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any adequate notion." So likewise Mohammed succeeded in instilling into his followers such an unquestion ing faith in their immediate transfer at death to the joys of heaven that they entered the battle with the certainty of winning either one of two equally glorious prizes—victory or Paradise.
Against men and nations under the control of doctrines of this cha racter, the sceptical Greek, the materialistic Roman, and the effete Persian were as certain to succumb as though their downfall had been written on their temples by a divine hand.
Doctrine of doctrine of or predestination, was familiar to the Greek mind, and was advocated by Lucretius as a philosophic theory, but as a religions doctrine received its complete development at the hands of Mohammed. It seemed to him a neces sary deduction from the doctrine of an omnipotent and omniscient Deity. Its effects on human action are complex. While fostering disre gard for danger and fortitude under suffering, it lames endeavor, arrests progress, and breeds indifference. Where it is deeply rooted in a com munity intellectual advance becomes impossible. For thiS reason the Mohammedan nations are, and always must be, unprogressive themselves and impediments to the progress of their neighbors.