Christianity as an Asiatic cult is not suitable to European races. To prove this, let us make a careful comparison between Paganism and Christianity. There are many foolish things, and many excellent things, in both the Pagan and the Christian religions. We are not concerned with particular beliefs and rites; it is Paganism as a philosophy of life, and Christianity as a philosophy of life, that we desire to investigate. And at the threshold of our investigation we must bear in mind that Paganism was born and grew into maturity in Europe, while Asia was the cradle of Christianity. It would be superfluous to undertake to prove that in politics, in government, in literature, in art, in science, in the general culture of the people, Europe was always in advance of Asia. Do we know of any good reason, when it comes to religion, why Asia should be incomparably superior to anything Europe has produced in that line? Unless we believe in miracles, the natural inference would be that a people who were better educated in every way than the Asiatics should have also possessed the better religion. I admit that this is only inferential, or _a priori_ reasoning, and that it still remains to be shown by the recital of facts, that Europe not only ought to have produced a better religion than Asia, but that she did. In my opinion, between the Pagan and Christian view of life there is the same difference that there is between a European and an Asiatic. What makes a Roman a Roman, a Greek a Greek, and a Persian a Persian? That is a very interesting, but also a very difficult question. Why are not all nations alike? Why is the oak more robust than the spruce? What are the subtle influences which operate in the womb of nature, where "the embryos of races are nourished into form and individuality?" I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and I am not going to attempt to answer it at all. We know there is a radical difference between the European and the Asiatic; we know that Oriental and Occidental culture are the antitheses of each other, and nowhere else is this seen more clearly than in their interpretations of the universe, that is to say, in their religions. In order to understand the Oriental races, we must discover the standpoint from which they take their observations. But first, it is admitted, of course, that there are Europeans who are more Asiatic in their habits of life and thought than the Asiatics themselves, and, conversely, there are Asiatics who in spirit, energy and progressiveness are abreast of the most advanced representatives of European culture. Nor has Asia been altogether barren; she has blossomed in many spots, and she nursed the flame of civilization at a time when Europe was not yet even cradled. To show the intellectual point of view of the Asiatic, let me quote a passage from the Book of Job, which certainly is an Oriental composition, and one of the finest: