Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/98

84 between man's life and his happiness or misery after death is often held as a definite article of theology, and thence it is to be traced onward through barbaric religions, and into the very heart of Christianity. Yet the grounds of good and evil in the future life are so far from uniform among the religions of the world, that they may differ widely within what is considered one and the same creed. The result is more definite than the cause, the end than the means. Men who alike look forward to a region of unearthly happiness beyond the grave, hope to reach that happy land by roads so strangely different, that the path of life which leads one nation to eternal bliss may seem to the next the very descent into the pit. In noticing among savage and barbaric peoples the qualifications which determine future happiness, we may with some distinctness define these as being excellence, valour, social rank, religious ordinance. On the whole, however, in the religions of the lower range of culture, unless where they may have been affected by contact with higher religions, the destiny of the man after death seems hardly to turn on judicial reward or punishment for his moral conduct in life. Such difference as is made between the future conditions of different classes of souls, seems more often to belong to a remarkable intermediate doctrine, standing between the earlier continuance-theory and the later retribution-theory. The idea of the next life being similar to this seems to have developed into the idea that what gives prosperity and renown here will give it also there, so that earthly conditions carry on their contrasts into the changed world after death. Thus a man's condition after death will be a result of, rather than a compensation or retribution for, his condition during life. A comparison of doctrines held at various stages of culture may justify a tentative speculation as to their actual sequence in history, favouring the opinion that