ecially in these inquiring days, who has
been taught a religion that mainly rests on the moral obligations
between man and man in domestic and national life, and which, so far
as it is necessarily dogmatic, rests chiefly upon the proper
interpretation of facts about which there is no dispute,--namely, on
those habitual occurrences which are always open to observation, and
which form the basis of so-called natural religion.

It would be instructive to make a study of the working religion of
good and able men of all nations, in order to discover the real
motives by which they were severally animated,--men, I mean, who had
been tried by both prosperity and adversity, and had borne the test;
who, while they led lives full of interest to themselves, were
beloved by their own family, noted among those with whom they had
business relations for their probity and conciliatory ways, and
honoured by a wider circle for their unselfish furtherance of the
public good. Such men exist of many faiths and in many races.

Another interesting and cognate inquiry would be into the motives
that have sufficed to induce men who were leading happy lives, to
meet death willingly at a time when they were not particularly
excited. Probably the number of instances to be found, say among
Mussulmans, who are firm believers in the joys of Mahomet's Paradise,
would not be more numerous than among the Zulus, who have no belief
in any paradise at all, but are influenced by martial honour and
patriotism. There is an Oriental phrase, as I have been told, that
the fear of the inevitable approach of death is a European malady.

Terror at any object is quickly taught if it is taught consistently,
whether the terror be reasonable or not. There are few more stupid
creatures than fish, but they notoriously soon learn to be
frightened at any newly-introduced method of capture, say by an
artificial fly, which, at first their comrades took greedily. Some
one fish may have seen others caught, and have learned to take fright
at the fly. Whenever he saw it again he would betray his terror by
some instinctive gesture, which would be seen and understood by
others, and so instruction in distrusting the fly appears to spread.

All gregarious animals are extremely quick at learning terrors from
one another. It is a condition of their existence that they should
do so, as was explained at length in a previous chapter. Their
safety lies in mutual intelligence and support.