Forlong - Rivers of Life

538
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
sprits of the departed will live hereafter, but that the road to Mbulu is long and beset
with many difficulties, and that those who would reach it must die or be killed before
any infirmities of the flesh assail them; the aged must therefore either kill themselves, 1
else may their children after a while, take the matter into their own hands.
If religion be the consequence more or less of Passion, Fear, or Love, one or all, I think
we may grant that man first developed his bestial nature in the indulgence of his animal
passions; and only gradually and slowly, as he came to see that morality was a useful
and sustaining power did he admit it as a guiding principle of his life. Thus with
fervent Fire and Phallic faiths, we find Greece and Rome developing also an advanced
Ancestor-worship, as my chapter on these races will make clear. The pouring of
libations over a Karn, or stone heap under which an ancestor rested, or the anoint-
ing of his pillar with oil—as we see constantly done in the East, as Alexander
the Great did that of Achilles, or as Jacob did, and all Shemitic tribes still do—is but
a silent and reverent expression, more or less devout, religious, or superstitious. It
was the ancient expression which northerns have harshly epitomised in such sayings as
“I will add a stone to your Karn;” “I honour your memory;” and in the case of
anointing, “may your posterity continue, I will aid them,” and such like.
In the East, as well as in the West, servants, jewels, armour, and most that the
deceased cherished, were put into his urn, coffin, or tomb with him; even the
“accounts and debts were so buried,” but not, I suspect, by the creditors!
Skythians in Upper Asia and Europe, and the Indians of Western forests and
prairies, alike buried horses, nay youths, maidens and wives with their favourite great
chiefs. Herodotus tells us 2 that the King of the Skoloti—the Skythians of Southern
Russia—took with him a complete household establishment to the next world—his
cook, groom pages, and a whole stud of horses. So that a strong belief in immortality,
if such was here the case, has not been such an unmitigated benefit to mankind as
many would have us believe. The Getæ, or Goths of the Danube, and afrerwards of
Lombardy, used to despatch regular messengers to their God Zalmoxis by tossing a
victim up in the air to him. They received the poor wretch on the point of three
spears, and if he was thus killed, then Zalmoxis had received their message; but if
not, they cursed him, and despatched another! What blessings have so-called religions
conferred on man! Have they not been “the arrow that flieth by days and. the pestilence
that walketh in darkness?” Yes, and the destruction that wasteth at noon-day 3
so much life and energy which otherwise might have been so wisely and usefully employed
in benefiting the race.
Even Jews who neither knew nor cared about immortality, till instructed by their
Eastern captors, had some among them in the sixth century B.C., who, according to
Ezekiel, were in the habit of putting their swords under the mighty dead “who have
fallen,” which it is said betokened a belief in a future life, and if so, one where men
are to fight and kill each other. Yet we must not lay it down as a rule that all who
1 Loc. Cit., p. 248.
2 [IV. 71-72.]
3 [Ps. XCI, 5-6, paraphrased.]