This extract is so much the more important for our thesis, since we perceive in every word the chagrin of a man who did not find in the hearts of others a fraternal echo to his dearest sentiments. It is, in truth, a difficulty peculiar to the study of questions of this nature. We must, therefore, be very careful in discussing the value of any testimony which may be brought forward, and to distrust those minds which begin by declaring _à priori_ the universality of beliefs, hopes, and fears among mankind, as a natural consequence of the primitive unity of the human species. We must always examine most minutely the accounts of travellers to which we are obliged to refer. Thus, for example, it is evident that the older the evidence, the better it is; but at the same time, the farther it goes back, the less chance there is that it emanates from an independent and impartial mind, free from all prejudice. Happily, the exaggeration of these ideas must often suffice to put us on our guard against them, like the candid Jesuit, whose zealous but hazy faith thought it had discovered traces of St. Thomas’s preaching in Brazil.[184] In an otherwise good notice of the Esquimaux,[185] Dr. King says, “that these people have preserved, like many other uncivilised races, a vague remembrance of the creation and of the deluge, and that they believe in future rewards and punishments.” In his religious zeal, Dr. King forgets that if the Esquimaux had been able to bring a confused tradition of even the deluge and the creation from the valley of the Euphrates, it was impossible it could have been the same with a belief in future rewards and punishments, seeing that the Jews themselves never possessed this belief before their contact with Assyrian civilisation. We may read in Dr. Brecher’s excellent work[186] the whole history of the development of this belief in the immortality of the soul. If the German doctor wishes piously to prove that the Jews ought, morally, to have always believed in this immortality, at all events, his zeal has been able to invent real proofs, which in fact, are wanting. The famous _scheol_, which is mentioned so often in old Hebrew books, appears to be merely the kingdom of the _dead_, and not that of _souls_, like hell, Tartarus, the Elysian fields, and Paradise; the _scheol_ is but an ideal representation of the tomb. Even at the time when the Jews had generally adopted the ideas of their neighbours, during the Talmudic period, the belief in the immortality of the soul, if it existed, was neither completely clear nor well reasoned, since they refused all participation in a future life to those who denied the resurrection and the last judgment, “which was equivalent to entire annihilation.”[187] To believe this, is certainly not to believe in the immortality of the soul, since they regarded eternal life not as a necessary consequence, but as a recompense for _good principles_, and having faith in them.