There are certain leading ideas that men generally have about the World of Shadows and the condition of the men and women there, and when they are confronted with difficulties of details, they are either silent as to how these are to be explained, or they boldly acknowledge that they can suggest no solution to them, and they go on holding them precisely as they did before the objections were raised. The turbidity of mind that is constitutional in a Chinaman, enables him to accept theories which are often in themselves self-contradictory, and in a Westerner would so shake his faith in them that he would infallibly reject them before long. The idols, for example, have so many vulnerable points about them, that these have simply to be stated to be at once accepted, but this does not seem to undermine the faith of their worshippers in them. They will laugh with the objector, and will even suggest points that he had not thought of, and yet they will be as earnest and devoted in their belief in them as though no suspicion had ever been raised concerning them. In addition to the belief already stated that Hades is but a continuation of the Chinese Empire in its social and political aspects and conditions, there is another one, most mysterious and most fateful, that is held by the masses, and that is that where retribution had not been visited upon the transgressor in this life for the evils he has committed, it will be meted out to him in full measure by the King of the Land of Shadows when he comes within his jurisdiction. This is a Buddhist idea that came to this country with the idols from India. It is true that the thought was dimly foreshadowed in the teachings of the early sages, who declared that "virtue had its rewards, and vice its retribution, and that if neither the rewards nor the retribution had yet been meted out, it was because the time had not yet arrived for such action." It was seen, however, that good men often died in sorrow, and their noble life had not been rewarded as the sages declared it would be, whilst men who had passed their lives in the commission of great wrongs, accumulated great wealth, had sons and daughters born to them, and finally died without the prediction of the great teachers of the nation being verified.