passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
must take into account their national character. Nations who value
life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be
crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
but a prison