Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/598

 584 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY ,

long existed and it contains a system made by them and for them. The old demonism of Babylonia overpowered it. For the practical life of persons who were not magi it was realistic and matter of fact. It inculcated industry and thrift and its ideals of virtue were industrial. They consisted in good work, in subduing the earth, and making it productive. It fell in with the mores of the people of the Euphrates Valley and strength- ened them. Mohammedanism has been a conquering religion; it has been imposed on some people who were heathen. For them it has great influence because its creed is simple and its ritual is simple, but at the same time strict and incessant. It has split into great sects on account of the transformations imposed on it by more civilized people who accepted it. Its fatal- ism, lack of civil ideas, spirit of plunder and conquest, fanati- cism, and scientific ignorance have entered into the mores of all the people who have accepted it. Hence the mores of Moham- medan nations present a great variety, and often very grotesque combinations. Christianity has taken very different forms among Greeks, Slavs, Latins, and Teutons. It inculcates meekness, but few Christians have ever been meek. It has absorbed all kinds of elements where it has met with native and national elements which it could not displace. That is as much as to say that it has had to yield to the mores. We hear a great deal about its victories over heathenism. They were all compromises, and when we get to know the old heathenism we find it again in what we thought were the most distinctive features of Chris- tianity. The religion of Odin was a religion of warriors and for warriors. It took its tone from them and gave back the warrior spirit with a new sanction and an intensified ideal in this world and the other. Ferocity, bloodshed, and indifference to death were antecedents and consequents of the religion.

Sects of religion form upon a single idea or doctrine. This they always exaggerate. Then the dogma gets power over the whole life. This is the case in which the religion rises superior to the mores and molds them, as in the case of the Quakers. Some sects of India (the Jains) have put the prohibition against killing anything whatsoever which has life before everything