RELIGIOUS BELIEF AS A BASIS OF MORALITY. 93 



the incidents of his life to a series of solar myths. It is, how- 

 ever, only on the theory of a religious schism that the fact that 

 the deities of Brahmanism are the devils of Zoroastrianism, and 

 vice versa, can be adequately explained. To assert that this 

 antagonism is the result of an " accidental selection " of gods is 

 no explanation at all. The religious history of mankind is not a 

 record of casualties or mere chapter of accidents. 



Besides, we have a modern example of a similar enmity grow- 

 ing out of the transition from nomadic to sedentary life in the 

 mythology of the Dards, who are, perhaps, one of the oldest races 

 and most primitive peoples of the East, and who believe in the 

 existence of demons called yatsh (bad), which, like the Homeric 

 Cyclops (the barbarous aborigines of the Sicilian coast), are of 

 gigantic stature, and have only one eye, set in the middle of their 

 forehead. These demons haunt the mountains and the wilderness, 

 and are exceedingly hostile to agriculturists, whom they vex and 

 harm in every possible manner, stealing and destroying the crops, 

 and even carrying off the husbandmen to their gloomy caverns. 

 In this scrap of mythology we have the survival of the old strife 

 between barbarism and civilization, which began with man's first 

 efforts to improve his condition. 



The barbarian is, in fact, the most uncompromising incarna- 

 tion and typical representative of conservatism; and it is the 

 survival of the barbarian temper of mind that constantly ham- 

 pers progress and hinders reform in modern times. His daily life 

 is the dullest routine and would be unbearable, were it not the 

 outcome and expression of the general rigidity and sterility of his 

 intellect. He treads religiously in the footsteps of his forefathers, 

 generation after generation, the whole mass moving on bodily 

 and mentally in single file, as is the custom with savages. He 

 is the stubborn foe of all innovations, and punishes as treason 

 against the tribe every deviation from the beaten trail. Under 

 such circumstances no social transformation can be effected with- 

 out fierce battle and bloodshed. In the primitive history of man- 

 kind, as in the early physical history of the globe, great changes 

 are uniformly the result of great convulsions. 



It is not merely the love of booty that leads nomadic tribes to 

 attack and lay waste the permanent settlements of husbandmen, 

 but the instinct of self-preservation resisting the encroachments 

 of a new form of social organization which imperils the old. For 

 this reason hunters are hostile to herdsmen, and herdsmen to 

 tillers of the soil ; since pasturage diminishes the extent and value 

 of hunting grounds, and agriculture diminishes the area of pas- 

 turage. 



Mr. D. Mackenzie Wallace gives a striking illustration of this 

 antagonism in the history of the Cossacks of the Don, who, so 



