dresses must labour indeed, but we are content with what we have.'

Such sentiments are certainly very un-European, but they contain a philosophy of life which may be right or wrong, and which certainly cannot be disposed of by being simply called savage.

A most essential difference between many socalled savages and ourselves is the little store they set on life. Perhaps we need not wonder at it. There are few things that bind them to this life. To a woman or to a slave, in many parts of Africa or Australia, death must seem a happy escape, if only they could feel quite certain that the next life would not be a repetition of this. They are like children, to whom life and death are like travelling from one place to another; and as to the old people, who have more friends on the other side of the grave than on this, they are mostly quite ready to go; nay, they consider it even an act of filial duty that their children should kill them, when life becomes a burden to them. However unnatural this may seem to us, it becomes far less so if we consider that among nomads those who can travel no more must fall a prey to wild animals or starvation. Unless we take all this into account, we cannot form a right judgment of the morality and religion of savage tribes.

Religion universal among Savages.

At the time when De Brosses wrote, the wonder was that black people should possess anything that could be called morality or religion, even a worship of stocks and stones. We have learnt to judge differently, thanks chiefly to the labours of missionaries who have spent their lives among savages, have

learnt their languages and gained their confidence, and who, though they have certain prejudices of their own, have generally done full justice to the good points in their character. We may safely say that, in spite of all researches, no human beings have been found anywhere who do not possess something which to them is religion; or, to put it in the most general form, a belief in something beyond what they can see with their eyes.

As I cannot go into the whole evidence for this statement, I may be allowed to quote the conclusions which another student of the science of religion, Prof. Tiele, has arrived at on this subject, particularly as, on many points, his views differ widely from my own. 'The statement,' he says, 'that there are nations or tribes which possess no religion rests either on inaccurate observations, or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met with destitute of belief in any higher beings, and travellers who asserted their existence have been afterwards refuted by facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call religion, in its most general sense, an universal phenomenon of humanity1.'

Study of the religion of literary nations.

When, however, these old prejudices had been removed, and when it had been perceived that the different races of Africa, America, and Australia could no longer be lumped together under the common name of savages, the real difficulties of studying these races began to be felt, more particularly with regard to their religious opinions.

1 'Outlines,' p. 6.

It is difficult enough to give an accurate and scholar-like account of the religion of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus and Persians; but the difficulty of understanding and explaining the creeds and ceremonials of those illiterate races is infinitely greater. Any one who has worked at the history of religion knows how hard it is to gain a clear insight into the views of Greeks and Romans, of Hindus and Persians on any of the great problems of life. Yet we have here a whole literature before us, both sacred and profane, we can confront witnesses, and hear what may be said on the one side and the other. If we were asked, however, to say, whether the Greeks in general, or one race of Greeks in particular, and that race again at any particular time, believed in a future life, in a system of rewards and punishments after death, in the supremacy of the personal gods or of an impersonal fate, in the necessity of prayer and sacrifice, in the sacred character of priests and temples, in the inspiration of prophets and lawgivers, we should find it often extremely hard to give a definite answer. There is a whole literature on the theology of Homer, but there is anything but unanimity between the best scholars who have treated on that subject during the last two hundred years.

Still more is this the case when we have to form our opinions of the religion of the Hindus and Persians. We have their sacred books, we have their own recognised commentaries: but who does not know that the decision whether the ancient poets of the Rig-Veda believed in the immortality of the soul, depends sometimes on the right interpretation of a single word, while the question whether

the author of the Avesta admitted an original dualism, an equality between the principle of Good and Evil', has to be settled in some cases on purely grammatical grounds?

Let me remind you of one instance only. In the hymn of the Rig-Veda, which accompanies the burning of a dead body, there occurs the following passage (x. 16, 3)—

'May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the wind,

Go to heaven and to the earth, as it is right;

Or go to the waters, if that is meet for thee,
Rest among the herbs with thy limbs.

The unborn part-warm it with thy warmth,
May thy glow warm it and thy flame!
With what are thy kindest shapes, O Fire,
Carry him away to the world of the Blessed.'

This passage has often been discussed, and its right
apprehension is certainly of great importance. Aga
means unborn, a meaning which easily passes into
that of imperishable, immortal, eternal. I translate
ago bhagah by the unborn, the eternal part, and then
admit a stop, in order to find a proper construction
of the verse. But it has been pointed out that aga
means also goat, and others have translated— The
goat is thy portion.' They also must admit the
same kind of aposiopesis, which no doubt is not very
frequent in Sanskrit. It is perfectly true, as may
be seen in the Kalpa-Sutras, that sometimes an
animal of the female sex was led after the corpse
to the pile, and was burnt with the dead body.
was therefore called the Anustarani, the covering.
But, first of all, this custom is not general, as it
probably would be, if it could be shown to be

It

founded on a passage of the Veda. Secondly, there is actually a Sûtra that disapproves of this custom, because, as Kâtyâyana says, if the corpse and the animal are burnt together, one might in collecting the ashes confound the bones of the dead man and of the animal. Thirdly, it is expressly provided that this animal, whether it be a cow or a goat, must always be of the female sex. If therefore we translate-The goat is thy share! we place our hymn in direct contradiction with the tradition of the Sûtras. There is a still greater difficulty. If the poet really wished to say, this goat is to be thy share, would he have left out the most important word, viz. thy. He does not say, the goat is thy share, but only, 'the goat share.'

However, even if we retain the old translation, there is no lack of difficulties, though the whole meaning becomes more natural. The poet says, first, that the eye should go to the sun, the breath to the air, that the dead should return to heaven and earth, and his limbs rest among herbs. Everything therefore that was born, was to return to whence it came. How natural then that he should ask, what would become of the unborn, the eternal part of man. How natural that after such a question there should be a pause, and that then the poet should continue Warm it with thy warmth May thy glow warm it and thy flame! Assume thy kindest form, O Fire, and carry him away to the world of the Blessed! Whom? Not surely the goat; not even the corpse, but the unborn, the eternal part of man.

It is possible, no doubt, and more than possible that from this passage by a very natural misunder