Mohammed taught the same tenet with equal or even greater emphasis. In one sura he says: “To whatever is evil may they be likened who believe not in a future life;” and elsewhere: “As for the blessed ones--their place is Paradise. There shall they dwell so long as the heavens and the earth endure, enjoying the imperishable bounties of God. But as for those who shall be consigned to misery, their place is the Fire. There shall they abide so long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless God wills it otherwise.”[256-2] In Buddhism, as generally understood, the doctrine of a future life is just as clear. Not only does the soul wander from one to another animal body, but when it has completed its peregrinations and reaches its final abode, it revels in all sorts of bliss. For the condition of Nirvana, understood by philosophical Buddhists as that of the extinction of desires even to the desire of life, and of the complete enlightenment of the mind even to the recognition that existence itself is an illusion, has no such meaning to the millions who profess themselves the followers of the sage of Kapilavastu. They take it to be a material Paradise with pleasures as real as those painted by Mohammed, wherein they will dwell beyond all time, a reward for their devotions and faith in this life. These three religions embrace three-fourths of the human race and all its civilized nations, with trifling exceptions. They displaced and extinguished the older creeds and in a few centuries controlled the earth; but as against each other their strife has been of little avail. The reason is, they share the same momentum of religious thought, differing in its interpretation not more among themselves than do orthodox members of either faith in their own fold. Many enlightened Muslims and Christians, for example, consider the descriptions of Paradise given in the Koran and the Apocalypse to convey wholly spiritual meanings. There has been so much to surprise in the rapid extension of these faiths that the votaries of each claim manifest miraculous interposition. The religious idea of an after life is a sufficient moment to account for the phenomenon. I say the _religious_ idea, for, with one or two exceptions, however distinct had been the belief in a hereafter, that belief had not a religious coloring until they gave it such. This distinction is an important one.