The Chinese Buddhists retained the fundamental conceptions of the ancient religion of their land and continued to worship their ancestors and to seek the readiest path to immortality. They soon came to transform Nirvâna into paradise, and to inculcate in the Chinese race the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. “The Buddhist monasteries in China for the most part possessed a set of little rooms, in which there were depicted, in vivid colours, crowded scenes from the eighteen hells of tribulation and lamentation. For there exist under the earth eight hells filled with the torments of fire, and ten with the equally terrible horrors of ice.”[185] The paradise of the Chinese Buddhists, or Ni-pan (Land of the Pure), is a region abounding in “gold and silver, and precious stones. Rivers of crystal run on golden sands covered with splendid lotus-flowers and traversed by delightful paths. Lovely music is always to be heard. Three times a day a shower of blossoms falls. There are to be seen there gorgeous birds, pheasants, and parrots, and many others; and these, every quarter of an hour, in a choir of melodious voices, trill out the beauties of religion and recall to their hearers the Buddha, Dharma, and Sungha. These are some of the wonders prepared for those who are born again after death. Into that land neither sin nor any evil enters.”[186] I need no longer accumulate details to show the falseness of the view that a third of humanity profess materialism to the exclusion of any belief in survival after death. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the vast majority of mankind is convinced that death puts no definite term to existence, and that this life is no more than a passing stage leading to a life to come. However, although many simple races believe that the future life is merely a continuation of this life, the more subtle-minded races present the future life as filled with delights for the good and with torments for the wicked. Such an idea of the next world, which is very generally accepted, is probably the basis of religions. From it have come the conceptions of supreme beings and divinities Many facts go to show that the primitive gods were no other than the relatives and ancestors of the living, now dead, yet living in another world and ruling the affairs of this world. Wicked ancestors became transformed into evil spirits, while good ancestors became mild and benevolent deities.