s negative attitude toward life it has found no favor as
a system with Western Indo-Europeans, Persians, and Semites, except that
it gave a coloring to certain Persian sects (the Ismailic) and has
perhaps influenced Bahaism.[2091] As far as present appearances go there
is no probability of its gaining general acceptance.

+1143+. Judaism is too much encumbered with peculiar national usages to
commend itself to non-Jews. There was a time just before and just after
the beginning of our era when a considerable number of persons resorted
to it for escape from the confusion of current religious systems, and
since that time there have been conversions here and there; but these
have been too few to affect the general character of religion in any
community. Even to Reform Judaism, which has discarded Talmudic usages
and does not differ doctrinally from certain forms of Christianity,
there clings a racial tone that tends to isolate it, and it does not
seem that this isolation is likely to cease soon.

+1144+. Christianity, beginning as a Jewish movement, speedily became
Graeco-Roman, and in this form took possession of the whole of Western
Asia (except Jewish districts and parts of Arabia), Greece, Italy,
Egypt, and the northern coast of Africa, and was adopted, under
Byzantine and Roman influence, by the Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic
tribes. Most of its Asiatic and all of its African territory except
Abessinia was taken from it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, but
small bodies of Christians remained in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and
Egypt. With this exception it has since been the religion only of the
Western Indo-Europeans and of a few half-civilized peoples who have been
Christianized either by missionaries (the Karens of Burma, a part of the
Telugus of Southeastern India and others) or by contact with Westerners
(Philippine Islands, tribes of North America and South America) or by
both these agencies (the Hawaiian Islands). Local peculiarities have
been largely banished from its usages but not from its dogma. It is,
apparently, its dogma (in the orthodox form) that has prevented its
acceptance by most Semites, by the peoples of Central and Eastern Asia,
and by many undeveloped tribes of Africa and Oceania.

+1145+. Zoroastrianism has never advanced to any important extent beyond
the boundaries of its native land. It has never recovered from the
crushing blow dealt it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, and i