Mt. Lebanon, vol. iii. ch. 7.

6 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume de Siam, ch. xx. p. 113.

women have no souls, or at least cannot attain to the highest
heaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarly
attributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A pious
and aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her future
condition in heaven. The prophet replied, "There will not be any
old women in heaven." She wept and bewailed her fate, but was
comforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips,
"They will all be young again when there." The Buddhists relate
that Gotama once directed queen Prajapati, his foster mother, to
prove by a miracle the error of those who supposed it impossible
for a woman to attain Nirwana. She immediately made as many
repetitions of her own form as filled the skies of all the
sakwalas, and, after performing various wonders, died and rose
into Nirwana, leading after her five hundred virtuous princesses.7

How spontaneously the idiosyncrasies of men in the present are
flung across the abysm into the future state is exhibited
amusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of a
dialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts the
apostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and says
that the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor in
the aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal's
worth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In hot wrath
the honest Caledonian poet cries, "If the children of Morni and
the tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal
out of hell, or the same habitation should be our own."8

Many of the most affecting facts and problems in human experience
and destiny have found expression, hypothetic solution, in
striking myths preserved in the popular traditions of nations. The
mutual resemblances in these legends in some cases, though among
far separated peoples, are very significant and impressive. They
denote that, moved by similar motives and exercised on the same
soliciting themes, human desire and thought naturally find vent in
similar theories, stories, and emblems. The imagination of man, as
Gfrorer says, runs in ruts which not itself but nature has beaten.

The instinctive shrinking from death felt by man would, sooner or
later, quite naturally suggest the idea that death was not an
original feature in the divine plan of the world, but a
r