130
RELIGION OF THE ETRUSCANS.
foolish alarms, and distracted men from the performance of the duties of every-day life. It fostered the pride and vanity of the priestly class by attributing to them superhuman
wisdom, and something lized the people
like infallibility, while it
demora-
by forcing them
to cringe before a selfish and arrogant hierarchy. If it diminished the natural tendency of men to overvalue the affairs of this transitory life, by
placing prominently before them the certainty and importance of the life beyond the grave, yet its influence was debasing rather than elevating, from the coarseness of the representations which it gave alike of the happiness and misery of the future state. Where the idea entertained of the final bliss makes it consist in feasting and carousing,* and the suffering of the lost arises from the blows and wounds inflicted by demons, the doctrine of future rewards and punishment loses much of its natural force, and is more likely to vitiate than to improve the moral character. The accounts which we have of the morality of the Etruscans are far from favorable ; f and it may be questioned whether the vices whereto they were prone did not receive a stimulus, rather than a check, from their religion.
good man's
" Cities and " * See Dennis, Cemeteries," vol. i. p. 294: They (the Etruscans) believed in the materiality of the soul; and their Elysium was but a glorification of the present state of existence the same pursuits, amusements, and pleasures, they had relished in this life they expected in the next, but divested of their sting, and enhanced by increased capacities of enjoyment. To celebrate the great event, to us so solemn (i. e., death), by feast'ng and joviality, was not with them unbecoming. They knew not how to conceive or represent a glorified existence otherwise than by means of the highest sensual ;
443-448. enjoyment." (Compare " pp. t See the Author's Origin of Nations," pp. 129, )
130.