Spread of Islam. 307 and Kordofan only in the beginning and the middle of the seventeenth century.28 Whether the Tuareg were formerly Christians, as Barth conjectures, requires further confirmation, and, again, whether in the former kingdom of Ghana, lying westwards of Timbuctoo, Christianity succumbed to Islam only in 1075, and in Nubia, where according to reliable records it still prevailed in the first half of the fourteenth century.29 Even at present Islam is slowly expelling Christianity from Abyssinia. Within our times the Fellatah have carried it to Adamaua, far into the interior of pagan Africa. The doctrine of the Prophet imposes no change of habits on the Africans. The negro who embraces Islam is assured that he rises higher, and by reason of his purer doctrine is nearer to God than the Christians. Lastly, in Africa the promulgators of the doctrine of the Prophet are poor and unpaid, whereas the missionaries, although they preach contempt for riches, surround themselves with profusion. In the opinion of a clear-sighted observer, these are the reasons why the Christian religion gives way to Islam among the negroes. 30 This doctrine has recently been victorious in China. It had early been diffused there; partly by way of Kashgar and the fertile districts on the southern slopes of the Thianshan, partly by sea, following the great mercantile routes to the places on the coast, until towards the end of the ninth century, on the downfall of the Thang dynasty, a persecution of foreigners and the extermination of the Mohammedans took place. A short time ago a governor established himself at Talifu, in the south-west of the Celestial Kingdom, among the Mohammedan Chinese, and seized a portion of the province of Yunnen. The English who had entered into commercial transactions with this infant state by way of Burmah, were full of praise of the honesty and morality of the Panthays, as these new adherents of Islam were named.32 According to more recent accounts the Chinese again destroyed this new creation in 1872. 28 Waitz, Anthropologie. 29 Fr. Kunstmann, Afrika vor den Entdeckungen der Portugiesien. 1853. 30 Gerhard Rohlfs in Ausland. 1870. 31 Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde. 32 A. Bowers, Bhamo Expedition. 1871. XVI. THE ZONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS. "KNOWLEDGE of the natural characters of different regions of the world," says Von Humboldt, in one of the most profound passages of his Physiognomy of Plants, "is an essential part of the history of the human race and of its culture. For although the beginning of this culture is not determined by physical influences. alone, yet its direction and the national character, the gloomy or cheerful temper of mankind, depend largely on climatic conditions. The sky of Greece had great influence on its inhabitants! The colonists in the beautiful and favoured districts between the Euphrates, the Halys, and the Egean Sea began early to recognize moral loveliness and tender feelings. When Europe had sunk back into barbarism, and religious enthusiasm had suddenly brought the sacred East into prominence, our forefathers again brought home from those genial valleys more gentle manners. The poetry of the Greeks and the ruder songs of the primitive people of the north mainly owe their peculiar character to the forms of the plants and animals, to the mountain valleys which surrounded the poet, and to the air which he breathed. Turning only to familiar objects, we all feel different emotions in the dark shade of beech-trees, on hills crowned with scattered fir-trees, or on the grassy plain where the wind rustles through the trembling foliage of the birch. These plants of our native land severally evoke in our minds melancholy, elevating, or gladsome images. The influence of the physical upon the moral world, the mysterious interaction of the sensible and of that which lies beyond the senses, endows the study of nature, when raised to higher points of view, with a peculiar charm which is as yet too little recognized." It would be a pleasant task carefully to trace the inward connection betwixt the greatest events in human society and the scenes in which they occurred. No one could better help us in our preparation for such researches than Buckle, according to whom, nothing is simpler and more intelligible than the reaction of the place of abode upon the mental phenomena. Where nature terrifies man by portentous objects of alarm, the imagination Influence of Locality on Character. 309 is more fully developed than the intellect, and belief in miracles is most luxuriant. "Italy, Spain, and Portugal," says Buckle, "are, of all countries in Europe, most frequently visited by earthquakes; earthquakes intimidate the mind of man, consequently the belief in the interference of supersensual powers with the physical order of the world has been more stubbornly maintained among the inhabitants of Southern Europe than in other parts." The terrible catastrophe which befel Lisbon more than a hundred years ago, although it stands alone in magnitude, may in some degree justify us in considering Portugal among the countries in which earthquakes most frequently occur, but Spain, although not entirely exempt, is not a country either specially or even severely visited by earthquakes. Japan, which so often trembles under the trident of Poseidon, is peopled by a cheerful race of men, given to tricks and jests, and heedless on subjects of religion. Russia, again, is almost entirely free from earthquakes, yet Italy has long been cleansed from a system of exorcism such as still prevails in the Greek Church. "In the tropics," Buckle continues, "nature appears still more violent and terrible in contrast with human pusillanimity, and hence among the inhabitants of India the imagination is preëminently peopled with illusions. There," he says, " obstacles of every sort were so numerous, so alarming, and apparently so inexplicable, that the difficulties of life could only be solved by constantly appealing to the direct agency of supernatural causes. There the terrified imagination beheld such visions of horror as Civa, or his consort Durga-Kali, the palms of whose hands were constantly. reddened with fresh blood, and whose necks were adorned with a string of human skulls.” I As Indian culture was especially developed in Hindostan proper, that is to say, in the district of the Ganges, exclusive of Bengal, nature, according to Buckle's views, ought there above all to have filled the minds of the population with sensations of fear and awe. Earthquakes do not occur, indeed, but they are replaced by terrific hurricanes. The Bay of Bengal is certainly the source of those cyclones or circular storms which have visited 1 History of Civilization. Calcutta twice within the last few years. The range of these scourges is however confined to the coast, and their devastations never extend beyond the limits of Bengal. The Himalayas are also supposed by Buckle to have exercised an intimidating effect, but they are either invisible from the thickly populated districts, or appear only as a beautiful boundary on the northern horizon. When Buckle spoke of pestilences invading tropical Asia with specially destructive footsteps, he was thinking only of the cholera which just at the time he wrote was making a fresh progress through Europe. But our quarter of the world was visited in former times by the black death and the plague-destroying angels which might well be compared with the relatively modern epidemic of India, so that the temperate zone was no more exempt than the tropics. Strangely enough Buckle does not even mention the most fatal evil genius of India, namely, famine, the most active of gravediggers, which even now, when rains fail and rivers run low, occasionally causes greater destruction than any pestilences or cyclones, and transforms densely populated districts into deserts; this happened in 1770, at the beginning of the British rule, when ten out of five-and-twenty millions of Bengalese perished in consequence of a failure of the crops. If the dangers and anxieties inherent in a place of abode exercise a control such as Buckle attributes to them over the dispositions of the people, the Dutch ought to be far more credulous than the Belgians. Constantly, but more especially at the time of the syzygies of the moon, they are threatened by an adversary as pitiless as the earthquake, namely, the sea, which they, inhabiting a territory below the level of the sea, have robbed of its rightful property. This power, though expelled, has frequently avenged itself, as, for instance, when the Zuyder Zee and the Dollart were filled by a sudden inroad, and all the villages with their inhabitants were swallowed up. Lastly, in every nation sailors and miners ought to be more superstitious than any other craftsmen, for they are peculiarly exposed to freaks of the forces of nature quite beyond calculation, yet no one has ever stated that this is the case in any perceptible degree. Hence we must admit that the greater perils of life in any place of abode have not been the cause of an excessive development Influence of Food on Character. 311 Grecian sky on the If one spot on earth of the imagination. Even Alexander von Humboldt's beautiful saying in regard to the reaction of the Hellenic temperament is unconvincing. deserves the name of paradise rather than another, it is assuredly Mexico, with its lakes, its splendid vegetation, its distant scenery, rendered beautiful by snowy volcanoes, its perpetually bright weather, and its bracing mountain air. But it is under these delightful skies that the gloomy disposition of the natives of Anáhuac has evolved all the horrors of a dark and bloody worship. Let us, then, rather attempt to ascertain whether the habitual food of the nation stands in causal connection with the phenomena of their temperament. Hindostan, the abode of Brahminism, and Central China, the home of Confucius, are almost equally exposed to sun, and are covered by a similar vegetation. Nature, as Buckle was obliged to admit, is in both places equally great and almost equally terrible; this may at least be strictly asserted of Southern China, and yet in the Celestial Empire imagination has taken quite another direction than in India, or rather, it has scarcely taken any direction at all. The Chinese eat everything, even Holothurians, or sea-cucumbers (Trepang), the very sight of which makes those who are unaccustomed to them shudder. Orthodox Hindoos of high caste, on the contrary, abhor every kind of animal food. But it was not always so. In the time of the Vedas the consumption of animal food was not yet prohibited, and at the same time the Vedic religion was not darkened by the creation of bloodthirsty deities, nor filled with horrors and terrors as in later times. The depression of spirits, the inclination towards the prodigious and grotesque, the weariness of life, the dread of an endless series of transmigrations, first began to develop among the Hindoos simultaneously with the transition to a purely vegetable diet. Probably every one knows by personal experience that our mental functions are dependent upon nutriment; for the genuine unconscious sleep, which is profound and refreshing, flies from us when the stomach is heavily overloaded. But hunger also, like all other cravings, even if partially satisfied, exercises control over the imagination. This biological fact was and still is the origin of the rigid fastings prescribed by religions so widely |