=27.= The story of the world-religions, with their countless prophets, teachers, confessors and martyrs, has its tragic side. We ask what was attained by so much study and self-denial, such courageous defiance of custom and prejudice, such bold strivings after the unattainable, so many hardly spent lives and premature deaths, and feel puzzled to find a reply. To the problems proposed the world-religions gave in turn every possible answer. Some found life sweet, others bitter; some bowed before the inexorable rule of destiny, others believed in a personal and benevolent government of the universe; some looked forward to a life after death, others hoped for annihilation. Their theories crystallized into dogmas, and as such became the banners under which national hatreds once more sought outlet in bloodshed. Their adherents sacrificed everything in the hope of reaching certain and scientific truth, and, at the end of all, religion still appears the whole world over to be in conflict with science, and the thousand years during which Wisdom was counted more precious than riches are often looked back upon as a time of human aberration and childishness. It is not to be denied that thousands of noble spirits set out during this period for a goal that they never reached; and those who are inclined to destructive criticism may plausibly characterise their enterprise as vanity. [Sidenote: The path still onward.] =28.= It is the task of literary research to pierce through this limited view, and to trace the real effect of philosophical effort on the life of individuals and nations. All over the civilized world it raised a race of heroes, struggling not for power or splendour as in the epoch of barbarism, but for the good of their fellow-men. It gave a new value to life, and trampled under foot the fear of death. It united the nations, and spread the reign of law and justice. Where its influence has weakened, the world has not changed for the better; so that the very failures of the world-religions most attest their value. India has relapsed from Buddhism, its own noblest work, to its earlier creeds, and they still bar its path against social progress. Europe, no longer united by the sentiment of a catholic religion, and increasingly indifferent to literary sympathies, is falling back into the slough of frontier impediments and racial hatreds. From all this there is no way out except in the old-fashioned quest of truth and good will. [Sidenote: Estimates of Stoicism.]