Religion and the Literary oral memorials of uncultivated nations are far more frequently occupied with the fancied doings of the gods than with the chronicles of past time. The primitive poets draw their inspiration rather from the rewards they expect to gain from chant ing the praises of the living gods than in recalling the deeds of prowess of departed heroes. The formulas and rituals of worship had an inherent sanctity, and had to be repeated precisely according to precedent. These considerations became the motives for the establishment of methods and schools of literary culture. Such are found in all ages and strata of civ ilization. C[csar states that the noble youth of Gaul were sent across the Channel to Albion to be educated in the far-famed Druidic colleges there. They were principally instructed in religious verses, of which they were obliged to commit to memory many thousand. The Zniii Indian who would be admitted to one of the religious orders must be able to repeat a mystic chant several hundred lines in length, observing accurately the intonation and archaic forms of the words. The Aztecs had long orations, prayers, and poems, which were taught by the priests in colleges called cal ;name, and were delivered on solemn occasions and in the various festivals.
To put these on record was one of the earliest motives which led to the invention of a system of writing. Like the Egyptian, most of the earlier alphabets start with a hieratic script. The oldest documents extant are the books of the divine commands as accepted by one nation or another, and much more than half of all that has ever been committed to writing by human hands has been in the nature of explanations, glosses, commen taries, versions, or discussions about these books. We have but to recall the enormous mass of literature which centres around the books of Lao tse and Confucius in China, of Sakya Muni in Ceylon, Thibet, China, and Japan, of the Avesta in Persia, the Veda in India, the Koran in Moham medan countries, and the Hebrew Bible and Greek Testament in the nations of Christendom, to perceive how active and ceaseless has been the train ing of the literary faculties by the demands of these eight leading book religions, which are, after all, but a portion of the literary religions of the globe. To this should be added the stimulus imparted to the study of language by the preservation and necessary analysis of the archaic forms in these records; the schools, universities, and learned orders or societies founded for their exegesis; the translations of them into other tongues either for the sake of proselytizing or of polemics; the fact that printing, like writing, was first invented for the purpose of disseminating religions works; and many allied facts of this nature,—and we cannot fail to acknowledge that religion has contributed most potently and in all its stages to the intellectual development of the race.
As a Teacher of position has been assumed by most eth nologists that there is no necessary connection between religion and morality, and that the faiths of the lower races have not as a rule or at all acted as a lever lifting them toward a higher ethical life. This must
be regarded as a hasty and unwarranted conclusion. It is true that most of their teachings seem to our enlightened minds either indifferent or destructive to morality. But that is an unjust measure to apply to them. The education of the conscience is in itself a great deal, and even if its commands are barbarous, as when it requires the Hindoo widow to mount the suttee pyre and be burned alive with the corpse of her husband, the strong sense of duty there apparent is in itself an ethical education.
When, as is the case with many even primitive religions, there are beneficent as well as malicious deities, the reverent gratitude which inspires the worship of the former is calculated to develop the benev olent emotions generally. We may be sure that religion would not so early and in so many instances have become associated with government had it not been observed that the duties of man to man within the tribe gained in observance through this connection.
Filially, the ideals which religion is wont to hold up to its votaries for admiration and imitation are usually the personification of what the national mind thinks loftiest, noblest, best; and it is incredible that a nation should ever strive to imitate that which is its best and not actually grow toward something which is really better. Such ideals are by no means confined to the faiths of cultivated nations. They are not repre sented only by the worldly-wise Confucius, the austere, self-centred Sakya Muni, the ardent, God-intoxicated Mohammed, and the other founders of the great religions of the world; they are as well charac terized and appear with not less noble features in the forests of the New World. The Aztec culture-hero Quetzalcoatl may be taken as the type of many of them. He was represented as the patron and instructor of artificers in stone and metals and feathers; in life he was chaste and tem perate, judicious in council, generous of gifts, kindly to the weak, opposed to wars and to bloody sacrifices, a framer of wise laws and merciful in their enforcement. This was the ideal which their religion held up for imitation to millions of the inhabitants of ancient Mexico. Could it be possible that such an exemplar, framed by the religions dreams of the race, did not elevate its moral sense? Such a conclu sion would be contrary to all we know of human motive; and the ver dict of the early missionaries was with all positiveness that the people who had this religious ideal was a nation of decidedly high ethical prac tices; as one of these witnesses says: "A good people, attached to virtue, urbane and simple in social intercourse, shunning lies, skilled in the arts, pious toward their gods" (Sahagun). We must acknowledge, therefore, that in all its grades and forms religion aids in training the sense of duty, in cultivating sentiments of gratitude, and iu enforcing to a greater or less degree the enactments of morality.