From that subtle race issues the most remarkable movement which modern Mohammedanism has produced. In 1844 a young man not twenty-five years of age, named Ali Mohammed, of Shiraz, appeared under the title of the "Bab" or Gate. Disciples gathered round him, and the movement was not checked by his arrest, his imprisonment for nearly six years, and his final execution in 1850. Thirteen years later one of his disciples named Bahá-ullah, "Splendour of God," announced {71} himself as "He whom God shall manifest," whose advent the Bab had foretold. Exiled to Acre, he died in 1892, and was succeeded in the leadership by his son Abbas Efendi. The new faith declared that there was no finality in revelation, and while recognising the Koran as a product of past revelation, claimed to embody a new manifestation of the divine Unity. Carried to Chicago in 1893 by a Bâbî merchant, it succeeded in establishing itself in the United States; and its missionaries are winning new adherents in India. It, too, claims to be a universal teaching; it has already its noble army of martyrs and its holy books; has Persia, in the midst of her miseries, given birth to a religion which will go round the world? {72} CHAPTER III RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE Religion presents itself in its most obvious form as a mode of activity. It is seen in some kind of behaviour; it prompts a particular sort of conduct. Behind the customs and rites which are its visible sign lie certain thoughts and feelings, often dim, indistinct, obscure. In the totality of its beliefs, emotions, and institutions, it is as much the product of the human spirit as poetry, or art, science, morals, and law. It will therefore always bear some kind of relation to the general circumstances of the social development to which it belongs. The interpretation of the surrounding scene which is implied in its intellectual outlook will vary with the elements of the scene itself. But the limits of variation are much smaller than might be expected. The questions "why" and "how" may be answered very differently under the Equator and within the Arctic zone, but they are the same questions, and spring from common impulses of thought. Moreover, while race, climate, and economic conditions may all vary, it happens to all men to be born {73} and to die. The family must be maintained, children must be reared, food must be procured, the tribal group must preserve its stability and, if possible, increase. There are universal elements in human life all over the globe; and the manifestations of religion founded upon them exhibit in consequence marked resemblances from land to land.