Arabian Geographers. 315 seven degrees, more or less. Each zone was supposed to possess certain products, animal, vegetable, and mineral, in special perfection; even towards the close of the Middle Ages, our schoolmen believed that black men were to be found only on or close to the equator, and that gold and precious stones never occur beyond the limits of the second zone. In the language of this systematic error, Shemseddin,3 who was named after his native city of Demeschqi (Damascus), stated that people of light colour and high intellectual endowments are limited to the third and fourth climates, or between 29° and 33° 49′ north latitude, and that in these zones were born all great founders of religion, philosophers, and scholars, himself included. This zone begins a little to the south of the parallel of Mecca (21° 21′) a great deal to the south of the parallel of Kapilavastu (27°), the birthplace of Buddha Gautama; on the other hand, its northern margin does not include Rai (Raghes) near Teheran, and still less Balch (Bactra). As we have already mentioned it was in one of these towns that Zoroaster was born. Yet there is some truth in the observation of the Arabian geographers, that the founders of the higher and still existing religions, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed belong to the subtropical zone. For the birthplace of the latest of the prophets alone falls within the tropics, though only by about seventy-four miles. We make no mention of Confucius, not on account of the high latitude of his birthplace in the district of Yentshau, in the province of Shantung, but because we should degrade the other founders of religion were we to reckon the Chinese moralist among their numbers. The fact that the zone of religious founders does not lie within temperate latitudes, might be explained by the supposition, that it was only in the presence of advanced intellectual development that mankind was able to add a yet higher dignity to human existence by allegiance to ideal objects, and that it was exactly in the subtropical climates that the most ancient social organizations had flourished. But even when civilization in its advance had passed outside the tropics, subtropical Asia still remained the fruitful parent of religions. Christianity did not Nouvelles annales des voyages, 6ème série, vol. vi. 1860. make its appearance in the over-refined European empire of the Romans, but in Palestine. Islam came into existence six hundred years later, not in Byzantium, but in Arabia. In the cold of the temperate zone, man has always been obliged to struggle hard for his existence, working more than praying, so that the burden of the day's labour constantly withheld him from deep inward meditation. In warm countries, on the contrary, where Nature facilitates the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and the sultry hours of mid-day prohibit any bodily exertions, opportunities for mental absorption are far more abundant. The place of abode is not however quite without influence on the direction taken by religious thought. The three monotheistic doctrines, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, originated with the Semitic nations, yet the tendency of the race was not exclusively to monotheism, for other Semites, such as the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, took other courses, while even among the Jews reversions to polytheism were frequent, and in Egypt especially the people of God sank completely into idolatry. The perpetual reappearance of monotheism received powerful support from the surrounding scenes of nature. All who have been in the desert extol its beneficent influence on the health and spirits. Aloys Sprenger declares that the air of the desert invigorated him more than that of the high Alps or of the Himalayas, and in a letter to the author he says: "The desert has impressed the Arabs with their remarkable historical character. In the boundless plains, the imagination which guides the youth of men is filled with images quite different from those suggested by forest country. The thoughts thus acquired are rather noble than numerous; out of his own consciousness of power man evolves for himself a yet bolder personality—a personal God by whom he is guided in his wanderings." Lastly, in nomadic life, it frequently happens that a herdsman roams about in solitude for weeks, tortured by hunger and thirst. Even the healthiest then suffers from illusions of the senses. In this state it often occurs that the forsaken wanderer hears voices speaking and calling to him; hence in Arabic there is a special word Hâtif for voices of this sort. In Africa, again, Ragl, derived from Radschol, the man, signifies such anthropomorphous ocular illusions. Every traveller who has crossed the deserts of Arabia and Asia Minor speaks enthusiastically of their beauties; all praise their atmosphere and brightness, and tell of a feeling of invigoration and a perceptible increase of intellectual elasticity; hence between the arched heavens and the unbounded expanse of plain a monotheistic frame of mind necessarily steals upon the children of the desert. The confusion of the Egyptian pantheon, the beautiful images of stone, the sacred animals, and human figures with emblematic heads and symbols, were not forgotten by Moses, the priest of Heliopolis, until he fled to Sinai, the oldest rock known to geology, and which, according to Oscar Fraas, is still uncovered by the smallest particle of any more recent formation, seeming as if it had never been submerged beneath the sea, had never risen Here in the wilderness it was necessary that up, never moved. the old Jewish race, with its Egyptian paganism, should be buried, before monotheism as a result of the thoughts and sights of the desert, could rise and strengthen itself in a new race. In other parts of the Scriptures the healthy influence of the desert is likewise testified. The zealous Elijah retired into the desert; John the Baptist also preached in the desert of Jordan, clad as a Bedouin, in a raiment of camel's hair, and living on locusts and wild honey. Christ also prepared himself for his career by passing forty days and forty nights in the desert. Lastly, Mohammed, although born in a city, imbibed the milk of a Bedouin fostermother, lived for a long time as a shepherd, and in his caravan journeys crossed the deserts between his own country and Palestine. The pilgrimages to Mecca, although far more ancient than Islam, are of no little service in strengthening the faith, inasmuch as they are preceded by a journey across the desert. But even independently of this, the followers of the Prophet live in the vicinity of deserts, for the doctrine of Mohammed has spread almost exclusively in the zone of Eastern Monsoons, and only in very late times extended into Africa as far as the Soudan. In India it was unable to extend beyond very narrow limits, and that only with political assistance. This is probably all that can be accurately ascertained in regard to the influence of the nature of the country on the tendency of the religious feeling of the population. The desert contributes materially to awaking monotheism, because, from the dryness and clearness of its atmosphere, it does not expose the senses to all the attractive phantoms of forest scenery, the sunbeams as they play through the openings in the trees on the trembling and shining leaves, the marvellous forms of the gnarled branches, creeping roots, and storm-stricken trunks; the creaking and sighing, the whispering and roaring, the hissing and rustling, and all the voices and sounds in wood and forest, amid which the illusion of an invisible animation is so apt to overcome us. Neither do curling mists sweep and steal over the desert as on damp meadow lands. These cloud forms, as they rise over the forests of New Guinea, are venerated by the nations of Doreh as visible manifestation of their good spirit Narvojé. It may therefore be asserted that with the extermination of the forests, not only is the climate of the locality altered, but poetry and paganism have also been struck with the axe. But if a sunny land is favourable to monotheistic emotions, yet at the same time every religious creation is but an expression of the mental endowments of the The Semites never possessed any genuinely epic literature, and their dramatic literature was extremely scanty, for they were destitute of the Aryan capacity for framing such productions. It would be an error to trace all the intellectual productions of nations to previous physical conditions alone. They are assuredly subject to a normal course of development, and are nothing more than the necessary expression of a series of causes. But the historical destinies of the nations are certainly among these causes. "It is an old maxim," says Delbrück,1 "that it is in the experiences of life that each individual finds or loses his God." race. 1 Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, vol. iii. |