In the oldest books of the Zendavasta, virtue and vice are personified as white and black. "The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gâthâs.... They go a step further and personify the two parties to the struggle. One is a 'white,' or holy spirit (_spentô mainyus_), and the other, a 'dark' spirit (_angrô mainyus_). But this personification is merely poetical or metaphysical, not real."--_Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies_," iii. p. 106. The contrast, however, between good and evil, as white and black was the genuine expression of their idea or tradition. (Hung. ap. Bunsen, iii. p. 476, admits, at least in one instance in the Gâthâs, "an angra ('black') is put in opposition to the white, or more holy spirit.") Mr Hunter ("Rural Bengal," p. 114) says of the primitive Aryans in India--"The ancient singer praises the _god_ who 'destroyed the Dasyans and protected the _Aryan colour_" (Rig. Veda., iii. pp. 34-39), and "the thunderer, who bestowed on his white friends the fields," &c. Whatever obscurity may attach to the latter passage, there can be no doubt of the abhorrence with which the singers speak, _again_ and _again_, of "_the black skin_," ... _e.g._ "the sacrificer poured out thanks to his god for 'scattering the _slave_ bands of _black descent_.'" Although I believe the idea was traditional and had reference to the curse, I will concede that it might have arisen primarily in the contrast of night and day, light and darkness. But does this settle the question? On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. Accordingly, the deeds of evil in Scripture are spoken of as the "works of darkness." It may be, therefore, that the idea of blackness as a curse is derived primitively from its association with the darkness of night; but the fact remains that blackness is connected in our minds with a curse,[69] and there is the further fact that a black race exists, and has existed during four thousand years, with this mark of inferiority upon it (compare _sup._ ch. iii. ix.)