ent schemes. For
instance, the conception that man has returned into this life from
anterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that he
does not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is at
once hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from which
the disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish in
the popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod of
gods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure,
appropriate to the characters of the divine personages, will
inevitably follow.

The interest, cunning, and authority of priesthoods are another
source of prevailing opinions concerning a life to come. Many
nations, early and late, have been quite under the spiritual
direction of priests, and have believed almost every thing they
said. Numerous motives conspire to make the priest concoct
fictions and exert his power to gain credence for them. He must
have an alluringly colored elysium to reward his obedient
disciples. When his teachings are rejected and his authority
mocked, his class isolation and incensed pride find a natural
satisfaction in threatening the reprobate aliens that a rain of
fire will one day wash them down the smoking gulfs of sulphur. The
Maronites, a sect of Catholic Christians in Syria, purchase of
their priests a few yards of land in heaven, to secure a residence
there when

4 Corrodi, Gesch. des Chiliasmns, th. i. abschn. 15: Gastmahl des
Leviathan.

they die.5 The Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it in
secret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering in
the separate state. "This foolish opinion robs the state of
immense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over these
treasures, and for their greater security place them in charge of
the talapoins!"6 When, for some reason or other, either as a
matter of neatness and convenience, or as a preventive of mutual
clawing, or for some to us unimaginable end, the authoritative
Skald wished to induce the Northmen to keep their nails close cut,
he devised the awful myth of the ship Nagelfra, and made his raw
minded people swallow it as truth. The same process was followed
unquestionably in a thousand other cases, in different particulars
of thought and aim, in different parts of the world.

In a bird's eye survey of the broad field we have traversed, one
cannot help noticing the marked influence of the present scenery
and habits, history and associations, of a