This attitude has again been erroneously regarded (e.g., Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, p. 35) as peculiar to the Greeks. Mr. Lang's assumption may, in fact, be overthrown by the single case of the Phoenicians, who showed no more concern about a future life than did the Hebrews (see Canon Rawlinson's History of Phoenicia, 1889, pp. 351-52), but who are not pretended to have given themselves up much to "developing, undisturbed, the belief in a righteous Eternal." The truth seems to be that in all the early progressive and combative civilizations the main concern was as to the continuance of this life. On that head the Hebrews were as solicitous as any (cp. Kuenen, i, 65); and they habitually practised divination on that score. Further, they attached the very highest importance to the continuance of the individual in his offspring. The idea of a future state is first found highly developed in the long-lived cults of the long-civilized but unprogressive Egyptians; and the Babylonians were developing in the same direction. Yet the Hebrews took it up (see the evidence in Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II, vol. ii, p. 179) just when, according to Mr. Lang, their cult was "rescued, in a great degree, from corruption"; and, generally speaking, it was in the stage of maximum monotheism that they reached the maximum of irrationality. For the rest, belief in "immortality" is found highly developed in a sociologically "degenerate" and unprogressive people such as the Tasmanians (Müller, Anthrop. Rel. p. 433), who are yet primitively pure on Mr. Lang's hypothesis; and is normal among negroes and Australian blackfellows.