244 REV. PEOF. JAMES HOPE M0TJLT0N, D.LIT V D.C.L., ETC., ON 



Gathas, must be named in connexion with the "Wei^hingr of 

 Merits. Zarathushtra taught that men can lay up treasure in 

 heaven : 



And this, 0 Mazdah, will I put in thy care within thy House 

 — the good thought and the souls of the righteous, their 

 worship, their piety and zeal, that thou mayst guard it, 

 0 thou of mighty dominion, with abiding power. 



Upon this foundation the Pahlavi Rabbinists built the more 

 dubious dogma of a treasure-house where were stored the 

 supererogatory good works of the saints, for the benefit of those 

 whose credit was inadequate. How this doctrine was squared 

 with that of Limbo is not clear : the saints, as spiritual million- 

 aires, might surely have spared of their superfluity enough to 

 empty Hamistakan, when the weight of an eyelash was enough 

 to do it for each one 1 



The deepest thought of Zarathushtra as to the future state 

 is that each man's destiny is determined by his own self. Of the 

 " future long age of misery, of darkness, ill food, and crying of 

 woe ! " the prophet says : 



To such an existence, ye followers of the Lie, shall your own 

 self bring you by your actions.* 



And again — 



Their own soul and their own self shall torment them when 

 they come where the Bridge of the Separate: is, to all time 

 dwellers in the House of the Lie.f 



Zarathushtra called heaven sometimes " the Best Thought." He 

 anticipated Marlowe and Milton in the truth which the Satan of 



Paradise Lost enunciates — 



The mind is its own place, and in itself 

 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 



The centrality of this doctrine in the Gathas enables us to put 

 Zarathushtra's own seal on the most beautiful thing in the 

 A vesta, the fragment on the passing of the righteous soul,* on 

 which I wish there were time to linger. The climax of it comes 

 when the soul, flying away to the South on the morning of the 



* Tama 31 20 . t Tama 46 11 . 



} The Hadhohht Nask, generally known as Yasht 22. I have given a 

 free verse paraphrase of this text at the end of my Early Religious Poetry 

 of the Persians. 



