less to point out that such doctrines annihilate at one sweep all moral responsibility, and can be used as a convenient cloak to cover a multitude of sins, even the worst.

In the northern part of Russia there is a religious sect resembling in some respects the Thugs. Little, however, is known of these except that they adore St. Nicholas, the 'chicken thief,' who is considered the patron saint of all thieves, and aids them in their enterprises. These religious thieves have also recourse to other supernatural forces. They sometimes disinter the dead, considering it as a talisman to have about them the finger or hand of a corpse, or a taper made of human fat. There is another, and more pathological sect in Russia, which belongs to this category. This sect, known as the Religious Suicides, teaches that the world must soon crumble to pieces and perish, and therefore it is behooving to leave this life of vanity and sin, and seek surcease from all ills in death. To those who consent to give up their lives they promise deliverance from the eternal torments of hell, and the delights of paradise. Their chants are characterized by a mournful despair, and hate of life. The following is one of the methods employed by some of these sectarians to rid themselves of their unhappy lives. The convert having expressed his desire to die is brought into an uninhabited hut accompanied only by the preacher who reads the Psalms. At the end of a certain time, a door opens, and the emblem of death presents himself, a large, robust man clothed in a red robe. Placing a cushion over the head of the convert he seats himself on it and remains in that position until the unfortunate fanatic is asphyxiated. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were, along the banks of the Volga, a large number of preachers belonging to several different sects who preached salvation by suicide, and made numerous converts. These would gather with their wives and children in some cave or wood and after certain ceremonies would massacre each other. Individual cases of religious suicide are still frequent in Russia, but suicides en masse have ceased owing to police surveillance.2

PITY.

It would be difficult indeed to overestimate the rôle that

1 Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, p. 14.

2 See N. Tsakni: op. cit., pp. 97-118; also M. Collindau: Le Delire Religieux, Bull. de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, Vol. 10, 1875.

pity has played not only in the religious life, but in the secular life as well. President Hall,1 in one of his searching articles, has shown what a large and important part it plays in the lives of children and adults; and Herbart, as we have already seen, considered it the essential principle of religion. In both the Old and New Testaments God is called a merciful and pitying God, and want of pity is considered an unpardonable sin. "For three transgressions of Edom, and for four (saith the Lord), I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever." Some writers have spoken of pity as the essential teaching of Christianity. It certainly takes rank next to love. "The sentiment of pity," writes President Hall, has played a rôle of supreme importance in the spread of Christianity. Hundreds of returns specify particularly all the experiences of Passion week. Some are most completely melted at the desertion of Christ by his disciples, others at the betrayal, others by his struggles of soul with himself and with the Father in Gethsemane, but most prominent of all in this galaxy of incitations to pathos is the crucifixion itself and the incidents connected with it. The stations of the Cross are often mentioned; Christ commending his mother to the care of the beloved disciple; the prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do; Christ met by his mother on the way to Calvary; taken from the Cross and laid upon the bosom of the mother of sorrows; the scene where Christ is stripped of his garments, his flesh bruised and torn from the scourging; the long journey up the hill with the heavy Cross and the three falls under its weight; Mary at the foot of the Cross seeing the Divine Son suffer and unable to even wipe the blood from his face."

But these incidents do not bring tears to the eyes of all. God on the Cross would not excite pity in Nietzsche, for instance; he would turn away from such a spectacle with shame and scorn. The Ubermensch,' he tells us, maketh his law to be ashamed in the presence of all that suffereth." And again," Thus the devil once said unto me: • Even God hath his own hell: that is his love unto men,' . And recently I heard the word said: God is dead; he hath died

1 Saunders and Hall: "Pity," Amer. Jour. Psy., Vol. 11, July, 1900. 2 Amos, 1:11.

of his pity for man.'" Zeno and Spinoza regard pity, bad in itself, and Darwin in his theory of the survival of the fittest' has little or no room for it. But the survival of the fittest' law is unfit for civilized men, as indeed it is for all the higher animals. Were this the supreme and inviolable law of nature the higher form of life could not have evolved. The higher the animal is in the scale of life the fewer are its offspring, and the greater and longer are their periods of helplessness. Had not nature, therefore, evolved love, and pity, and sympathy, these offspring would, according to the above law, be either devoured or left to perish. But nature has implanted the tender instincts in the hearts of parents, and as a consequence we find them instinctively violating Darwin's law and risking their lives for the survival of the weak and the unfit. M. Kropatkin, in his recent masterly work, Mutual Aid, shows convincingly that the severe 'struggle for survival,' of which so much has been made since Darwin, is more or less a myth. Mutual aid rather than mutual destruction is, according to him, the reigning law in the animal world. From love and pity of one's own progeny, these emotions irradiate and cover the progeny of others of the same species, and finally to everything that is powerless and helpless, the young and old alike. In man these emo

tions are sometimes so highly developed as to be entirely divorced from reason. Man loves and pities he knows not why, and not infrequently when he knows he should not. From this to a pathological development of pity is but a short step.

The true pedagogy of pity is, as President Hall has shown, not to eradicate it entirely from the soul, nor on the other hand to lavish it promiscuously and indiscriminately upon "the undervitalized poor, the moribund sick, defectives, and criminals, because by aiding such to survive, the process of wholesome natural selection by which all that is best has hitherto been developed, will be interfered with. Pity needs new ideals. Its work is no longer the salvage of the wreckage of humanity, but if Jesus came to our biological age he would be crucified afresh in the thwarted ambitions and blighted ideals of those most noble, yet most often crushed by circumstances, over which they have no control. Pity has as its highest office then, in removing handicaps from those most able to help man to higher levels, the leaders on more exalted plains who can be of most aid in ushering in the king

dom of the superman." In other words we must learn not to cease to pity but to pity aright.

Like the other emotions, pity has, at times, been unduly focused upon and led to many morbid excesses. Pity and sympathy are the nearest approaches we have to suffering and pain, and in some cases they actually pass over into the latter. Cases of religious stigmatization, like that of St. Francis of Assissi and Louise Lateau, are the most extreme and pathological examples of this. For more than four years blood flowed regularly every Friday from the left side of the latter's chest, from both feet, the palms and backs of both hands, and also her forehead. According to her physician, Dr. Lefebvre, the quantity of blood lost on each occasion was about seven-eights of a quart. 1

In many of President Hall's returns a single incident was singled out of a whole situation. The very sound of the word 'nail' produced a nervous shudder in one; another, “on seeing old nails that looked antique felt a pain in her palms, and sometimes in her feet from the strength of her imaginaStill another felt them so intensely that it seems quite likely "that she is well on toward stigmata." 2 In all, twenty-eight were profoundly affected by nail items; others centered on the sharp thorns, the vinegar, falling under the cross, trial before Pilate, etc.

The religious sect which has focused upon pity more, perhaps, than any other, is that of the Jains of India. These believe that every object, even plants, minerals, water, fire, etc., possesses a soul, and therefore they abstain from destroying even the minutest animal, deeming the destruction of any sentient creature the most heinous of crimes. Lest they should accidentally tread upon an insect they always carry at their girdles a small broom with which they tenderly sweep aside every insect which they may observe in their path. "To so senseless a length do they carry this principle, that they will not pluck any herb or vegetable, or partake of any sort of food, which may be supposed to contain animalculæ ; so that the only articles of sustenance remaining to them appear to be rice, and a few sorts of pulse, which they cook with milk. They affirm, indeed, that it is as foul a murder to kill an insect as to slay a man; and so extreme is their precaution to avoid the commission of the crime, that it

1 F. W. H. Myers: Human Personality, Vol. 1, p. 492. 2 Saunders and Hall: Am. Jour. Psy., vol. 11, p. 559.

is with great reluctance, and only when reduced to the necessity by urgent thirst, that they will drink water; even then they invariably suck up the fluid through a piece of fine muslin. In like manner when they require water for ablution, or any unavoidable household purpose, they carefully strain it repeatedly before they venture to use it. The most noxious vermin and insects are also treated with the same consideration as the most harmless creatures; and if, through persevering annoyance, they are compelled to deprive certain odious insects of the asylum usually found upon their persons, they remove the tormentors with the utmost care, and tenderly place them out of harm's way. This is closely paralleled by the beliefs and actions of the Doukhobors in Canada, who refuse to eat meat, and to own and work with animals, etc.; by the intense pity which some women and children have for animals, insects, plants, and even inanimate objects, such as locomotives when puffing,' "the moon when black clouds pass over it," etc.

Again this sentiment becomes almost pathological among vegetarians, and in the nervous and violent crusades against vivisection, even of the most humane, painless, and scientific kind.

FEAR.

"Fear is the father of religion, love her late-born daughter." In every age and land there have been those who have held that fear is the source of all religions. King Solomon declared that, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," and had he been speaking of the origin of religion he would have probably added and of religion.' Petronius long ago sang, "Fear first made the gods," and in our own day, to men tion only a few, D'Alviella, and Alfred Maury, from whom we quote the first sentence, regard this sentiment as one root of religion of which the other is love. The Italian anthropologist, Sergi, offers many ingenious arguments to prove that one of the main roots of all religions is irrational fear, due to man's ignorance of natural laws; and Paul Carus evidently agrees with Petronious when he writes, "Demonolatry or Devil worship is the first stage in the evolution of religion, for we fear the bad not the good." 2

These views are, of course, extreme and partial, like some

1 Dict. of all Religions.

2 Hist. of the Devil.