22. And this belief in a life beyond the grave, and pretended knowledge of its conditions--under one form or other one of the most ancient and widespread conceptions of the human race--what has it led to? Inhumanity in time past, inhumanity now; bloodshed and misery, dark delusion, degrading superstition, priestly pretence, persecution and intolerance, creed exclusiveness and bigoted zeal, misdirected fervour and visionary hopes--all the offspring of this conviction--fill the records of mankind. 23. Among barbarous races the vivid realisation of the spiritual world has led to such sad misguidance of the life on earth as the following;--(a.) The custom, prevalent both in ancient and modern times, of sacrificing wives, friends, and slaves at funerals to supply the wants of the deceased in the land of spirits, or to accompany him thither, (b.) Men killing their relations "out of love," as soon as they showed signs of decrepitude, under the belief that in the next world the spirits will be vigorous or otherwise, corresponding to the state of the body at time of death, (c.) Incitement to bloodshed and war by the belief that the enemies a man killed in this world, or those of whose skulls or scalps he obtained possession, would serve him as slaves in the next; or by the more manly conviction that a warring life on earth and a glorious death in battle were the best preparations for the future state, (d.) The practice, still carried on to a frightful extent among some of the African races, of killing men to serve as messengers to their departed kindred in the other world, (e.) The various gloomy and degrading delusions through the arts of spirit-mediums, sorcerers, witches, or other pretenders to intercourse with or control over the spirit-world.