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 ESCHATOLOGY

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ESCHATOLOGY

Tongas ; while the Greenlanders, New Guinea negroes, and others seem to hold the possibility of a second death, in the other world or on the way to it. The next world itself is variously located — on the earth, in the skies, in the sun or moon — but most commonly under the earth ; while the life led there is conceived either as a dull and shadowy and more or less impotent existence, or as an active continuation in a higher or idealized form of the pursuits and pleasures of earthly life. In most savage religions there is no very high or definite doctrine of moral retribution after death ; but it is only in the case of a few of the most degraded races, whose condition is admittedly the result of de- generation, that the notion of retribution is claimed to be altogether wanting. Sometimes mere physical prowess, as bravery or skill in the himt or in war, takes the place of a strictly ethical standard; but, on the other hand, some savage retigions contain une.xpect- edly clear and elevated ideas of many primary moral duties.

(2) Coming to the higher or civilized races, we shall glance briefly at the eschatology of the Babylonian and Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Greek religions. Confucianism can hardly be said to have an eschatology, except the very indefinite belief in- volved in the worship of ancestors, whose happiness was held to depend on the conduct of their living de- scendants. Mohammedan eschatology contains noth- ing distinctive except the glorification of barbaric sen- suality.

(a) Babylonian and Assyrian. — In the ancient Baby- lonian religion (with which the Assyrian is substan- tially identical) eschatology never attained, in the his- torical period, any high degree of development. Ret- ribution is confined almost, if not quite, entirely to the present life, virtue being rewarded by the Divine bestowal of strength, prosperity, long life, numerous offspring, and the like, and wickedness punished by contrary temporal calamities. Yet the existence of an hereafter is believed in. A kind of semi-material ghost, or shade, or double (ekimmu), survives the death of the body, and when the body is buried (or, less commonly, cremated) the ghost descends to the underworld to join the company of the departed. In the " Lay of Ishtar" this underworld, to which she de- scended in search of her deceased lover and of the "waters of life", is described in gloomy colours; and the same is true of the other descriptions we possess. It is the " pit ' ', the " land of no return ' ', the " house of darkness", the "place where dust is their bread, and their food is mud"; and it is infested with demons, who, at least in Ishtar's case, are empowered to inflict various chastisements for sins committed in the upper world.

Though Ishtar's case is held by some to be typi- cal in this respect, there is otherwise no clear indi- cation of a doctrine of moral penalties for the wicked, and no promise of rewards for the good. Good and bad are involved in a common dismal fate. The loca- tion of the region of the dead is a subject of contro- versy among Assyriologists, while the suggestion of a brighter hope in the form of a resurrection (or rather of a return to earth) from the dead, which some would infer from the belief in the " waters of life" and from references to Marduk, or Merodach, as "one who brings the dead to life", is an extremely doubtful conjecture. On the whole there is nothing hopeful or satisfying in the eschatology of this ancient religion.

(b) Egyptian. — On the other liand, in the Egyptian religion, which for antiquity competes with the Baby- lonian, we meet with a highly developed and compara- tively elevated eschatology. Leaving aside such diffi- cult questions as the relative priority and influence of different, and even conflicting, elements in the Egyp- tian religion, it will suflnce for the present purpose to refer to what is most prominent in Egyptian eschatol- ogy taken at its highest and best. In the first place,

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then, life in its fullness, unending life with Osiris, the sun-god, who journeys daily through the underworld, even identification with the god, with the right to be called by his name, is what the pious Eg.yptian looked forward to as the ultimate goal after death. The de- parted are habitually called the "living"; the coffin is the "chest of the living", and the tomb the "lord of life". It is not merely the disembodied spirit, the soul as we understand it, that continues to live, but the soul with certain bodily organs and functions suited to the conditions of the new life. In the elabo- rate anthropology which underlies Egyptian eschatol- ogy, and which we find it hard to untlerstand, several constituents of the human person are distinguished, the most important of which is the Ka, a kind of semi- material double; and to the justified who pass the judgment after death the use of these several constit- uents, separated by death, is restored.

This judgment which each undergoes is described in detail in chapter cxxv of the Book of the Dead. The examination covers a great variety of pensonal, social, and religious duties and observances; the deceased must be able to deny his guilt in regard to forty-two great categories of sins, and his heart (the symbol of conscience and morality) must stand the test of being weighed in the balance against the image of Maat, god- dess of truth or justice. But the new life that begins after a favourable judgment is not at first any better or more spiritual than life on earth. The justified is still a wayfarer with a long and diffieult journey to ac- complish before he reaches bliss and security in the fertile fields of Aalu. On this journey he is exposed to a variety of disasters, for the avoidance of which he depends on the use of his revivified powers and on the knowledge he has gained in life of the directions and magical charms recorded in the Book of the Dead, and also, and perhaps most of all, on the aids providetl by surviving friends on earth. It is they who secure the preservation of his corpse that he may return and use it, who provide an indestructible tomb as a home or shelter for his Ka, who supply food and drink for his sustenance, offer up prayers and sacrifices for his bene- fit, and aid his memory by inscribing on the walls of the tomb, or writing on rolls of papyrus enclosed in the wrappings of the mummy, chapters from the Book of the Dead. It does not, indeed, appear that the dead were ever supposed to reach a state in which they were independent of these earthly aids. At any rate they were always considered free to revisit the earthly tomb, and in making the journey to and fro the blessed had the power of transforming themselves at will into various animal-shapes. It was this belief which, at the degenerate stage at which he encountered it, Herodotus mistook for the doctrine of the transmigra- tion of souls. It should be added that the identifica- tion of the blessed with Osiris ("Osiris N. N." is a usual form of inscription) did not, at least in the earlier and higher stage of Egyptian religion, imply pantheis- tic absorption in the deity or the loss of individual per- sonality. Regarding the fate of those who fail in the judgment after death, or succimib in the second proba- tion, Egyptian eschatology is less definite in its teach- ing. "Second death" and other expressions applied to them might seem to suggest annihilation; but it is sufficiently clear from the evidence as a whole that continued existence in a condition of darkness and misery was believed to be their portion. And as there were degrees in the happiness of the bles.sed, so also in the punishment of the lost (see Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, London, 1901).

(c) Inilinn. — In the Vedic, the earliest historical form of the Indian religion, eschatological belief is simpler and purer than in the Brahministic and Bud- dhistic forms that succeeded it. Individual immor- tality is clearly taught. There is a kingdom of the dead under the rule of Yama, with distinct realms for the good and the wicked. The good dwell in a realm