Why are the Maories and many other people disappearing? From disease? That is not a reason. It is a fact that with a virile people a plague or famine is followed by an increase in the birth rate. This is proved in India. The Maories, too, have lost heart. They may have acquired Christianity, but that is no help. No; the adoption of a religion does not affect the question. But still they go together, and the answer seems to be here: A nation that is virile, that is full of vitality, finds an outlet for that vitality in children, an expression of it in religion. A virile people is optimistic always. Pessimism, whether in nations or individuals, comes from a deficiency of nerve strength. But why peoples lose their vitality no one yet knows. There is a tribe on the Shan frontier of Burma that twenty years ago was a people of active hunters, always gun or bow in hand, scouring the forests for game, fearing nothing. And now they have lost their energy. Their nerve is gone. They are listless and depressed. For a gun they substitute a hoe and do a little feeble gardening. Their children are few, and shortly the tribe will be dead. No one knows why. Religion, deep and true, and strong faith is possible only to strong natures; it is the outcome of strong feeling. It is a companion always to that virility that is optimism, that does not fear the future; it knows not what may come, but faces the future with confidence. It takes each day as it comes. Such are the nations that replenish the earth. The world is the heritage of the godly. The Old Testament is full of that truth, and it is no less true now than then. But one does not proceed from the other. They both come from that fount whence springs the life of the world. CHAPTER XXX. WAS IT REASON? Reason and religion have but little in common. They come from different sources, they pursue different ways. They are never related in this order as cause and effect. No one was ever reasoned into a religion, no one was ever reasoned out of his religion. Faith exists or does not exist in man without any reference to his reason. Reason may follow faith, does follow faith; never does faith follow reason. Is it indeed always so? Then how about the boy told of in the earlier chapters? He was born into a religion, he was educated in it, and he rejected it. Why? He himself tells why he did so, because his reason drove him away from it. His reason, looking at the world as he found it, could not accept the way of life inculcated by his faith. He found it impossible, unworkable, and therefore not beautiful. His reason told him it was impracticable, not in accordance with facts, and therefore he would have none of it.