INTRODUCTION.

Philosophy, religion, astrology, magic, mythology, literature, art, war, commerce, and government will of necessity present some obstacles to readers unfamiliar with the study of religion.

It is in the hope of easing the difficulty of absorbing M. Cumont’s contribution to knowledge—and above all, to life—that these brief words of introduction are written. Outlining the main lines of thought that underlie his view of the importance of the Oriental religions in universal history may provide the uninitiated reader with a background, making the author’s depiction of the various Oriental cults clearer and easier to understand.

M. Cumont’s work transports us in our imagination to a time when Christianity was still—at least in the eyes of Roman pagans—only one of many foreign Eastern religions struggling for recognition in the Roman world, especially in the city of Rome. To understand the conditions under which the new faith finally triumphed, we must first realize the number of these religions and the seemingly chaotic state of paganism when viewed as a system.

“Let us suppose,” says M. Cumont, “that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of Shinto. Let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes Buddhist monks, Tibetan lamas, and Hindu pundits were all preaching fatalism and predesti-