History of Religious Evolution 733 



bacchanalian rejoicings, through exploitation of the riches 

 secured in each campaign. Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Aphrodite, 

 Urania, and Venus — ^national adaptations of the sensual Semitic 

 goddess of Love — spread into every circum-mediterranean 

 land, and, along with gods and goddesses of less pronounced 

 sensuous type, started a degraded pleasure-seeking and pessi- 

 mistic outlook on life. The biotic and the coarser cognitic 

 energies most largely energized the free peoples. 



The principles of sympathy, of brotherhood, of cooperative 

 kindness and helpfulness that Zarathushtra, Gautama, and 

 many of the Hebrew teachers of later Old Testament history 

 proclaimed could not well survive amongst nationalities that 

 had bond-slaves. The invariable brutal cruelty, deceit, op- 

 pression, sensuality, and unintellectuality that slavery brings 

 to those who practise it sapped the higher cogitic aspirations. 



So, when the Visigoths, Ostragoths, and other rude though 

 more natural and undegraded hordes swept down, the old 

 polytheistic nations fell, after each had weakened the other by 

 repeated assault, Greek against Persian, x\ssyrian, and Syrian; 

 Roman against Greek and Carthagenian; Egyptian against 

 Roman, and vice versa. Unlikely though it might seem, the 

 higher cogitic and the spiritic triumphed, and monotheism 

 became the hope of the world. 



But in the process Zoroastrianism — the religion of Zara- 

 thushtra or Zoroaster — , that promised so much, receded into 

 the background, though it evidently made itself far more felt 

 from its home in Iran westward into Greece and Rome, as 

 well as eastward into India than we have yet recognized. It 

 evidently also influenced and modified that still older Iranian 

 cult of Mithraism, which from 100 B. C. to 300 A. I), spread 

 far abroad and became a formidable rival to Christianity 

 amongst the evolving nations of Europe. 



Even were ample evidence at our disposal, it would be super- 

 fluous now to attempt proof that Egyptian, Mycensean, Hit- 

 tite, and Greek religious beliefs, as well as artistic and sci- 

 entific knowledge, were largely derived from a primitive Irano- 

 Sumerian source. Such however, the writer anticipates, may 



