240 BEV. PEOF. JAMES HOt'E MOULTON, D.L1T._, D.C.L., ETC., ON 



later fancy put it, would pass through the flood as through 

 warm milk, but the wicked would be burnt up. The Evil 

 Spirit and his hosts would be destroyed, and his realm purged. 

 The figure is an example of the use of mythology, of which 

 I spoke just now. The fire was an unmistakable survival from 

 Aryan antiquity, and Zarathushtra's use of it is characteris- 

 tically incomplete ; the machinery of individual judgment, as 

 we shall see, is altogether inconsistent with it. But this figure 

 and that alike illustrated the thought Zarathushtra meant to 

 drive home ; and he cared little enough whether the figures were 

 congruous with one another. AVhat mattered for him was that 

 men should be induced to fight manfully on the side of Asha, 

 the Plight, in confidence that the end of the campaign would 

 be the eternal victory of God over evil of every kind. 



The human agents of the "Eenovation " are called Saoshyanto, 

 "they who will deliver"; and Zarathushtra unmistakably 

 means himself and his immediate helpers, King Yishtaspa and 

 the noble brothers Frashaoshtra and Jamaspa. As I said just 

 now, the consummation was expected within the Prophet's life- 

 time. When that generation passed away, the term had to 

 change its meaning ; and the Saoshyants became a succession of 

 three miraculously born sons of Zarathushtra, to appear at 

 intervals of a thousand years, the last of whom was to usher 

 in the End. 



At this point we necessarily pass from the universal to the 

 individual. AVhat was to happen to the wicked when at last 

 slow Vengeance overtook them ? There are, I suppose, just 

 three possibilities which come within the range of our human 

 thought — which is not equivalent to denying the possibility of 

 a fourth, inconceivable to our faculties as a fourth dimension of 

 space. They may be annihilated or reduced to unconsciousness 

 at death, or at some time after death : their punishment may 

 end after an interval in restoration, or it may go on for ever. 

 Among these there is no sign that Zarathushtra himself thought 

 of any but the last. When later Parsee speculation pictured 

 hell itself purified and added to the universal realm of Mazdah, 

 it may conceivably have built on lost Gathas. We are not 

 obliged to demand consistency in this matter : the imagery 

 used will quite naturally vary with the practical lesson which 

 a prophet is urging at the moment. Even in the Xew Testament 

 the upholders of each of the three doctrines — Conditional 

 Immortality, Universalism, Eternal Pietribution — have been 

 able to find texts which prima facie support their particular 

 view. But in our extant Gathas Zarathushtra is perpetually 



