In the Russia of my childhood and youth, at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth, religious attitudes and practices in society as a whole were still those inherited through centuries of tradition in the Russian Orthodox Church. Traditional observances had not yet, as they were soon to be, been widely questioned or neglected. Most orthodox Russians tried to live according to the rules of the Church; but I believe that the merchant class, which included my family, followed established religious practices more strictly than other laymen. Perhaps this was because they were more traditional-minded than the bureaucracy or the aristocracy.

In the first book of the Tusculanae, and in the last book of De Republica, Cicero has left us two notable documents in the development towards later views of the soul and the hereafter. Both works are among his best; both are composed with care, neither is a random compilation of doxographical material. In the Somnium Scipionis, the language of the dream reflects with particular persuasiveness the impulse of the soul to take wings and fly away into the ever-calling unknown. But the essential doctrines of both works are the same: the hereafter in its reality, as a return to the beginning of things, as the true life; and the death of kings and philosophers as a robing, a sacred investiture.

The basis of the notion of kingship which underlies the Coronation Liturgies of the West. The nature of this liturgical expression: its universality; its varied and even pre-Christian flowerings.

Certain Genera of animals, once flourishing, but now extinct and known only by their fossilized remains, are described by paleontologists. Literary historians recognize also certain genera of literature, once flourishing, but now extinct and known only to a few specialists who care to delve into books which, gathering dust on library shelves, are all but forgotten and virtually fossilized.

Historians of Buddhism in China have long ago noted the fact that after the T'ang dynasty Buddhism no longer played a creative rôle in the literature and arts of China, and that the Buddhist church ceased to make any significant contributions toward the religious and social life of the nation. Some people are inclined to attribute this decline of Buddhism to the suppression of 845, when 260,000 monks and nuns were ordered defrocked, and over 40,000 temples and shrines ordered destroyed. It was held that the religion never recovered from this blow. However, this view does not take into account the fact that during certain periods of the Sung dynasty, the number of monks and nuns actually exceeded that under the T'ang; in 1021, monks 397,615, nuns 61,239; in 1034, monks 385,220, nuns 48,742. It would be necessary therefore to look for some other factors to account for the decline in the influence of the sangha, especially during and after the Sung dynasty.