When Ahriman shall cause the comet to fall on the earth to gratify his destructive propensities, he will be really serving the Infinite Being against his own will.  For the conflagration caused by this comet will change the whole earth into a stream like melted iron, which will pour impetuously down into the realm of Ahriman.  All beings must now pass through this stream:  to the righteous it will feel like warm milk, and they will pass through to the dwellings of the just; but all the sinners shall be borne along by the stream into the abyss of Duzahk.  Here they will burn three days and nights, then, being purified, they will invoke Ormazd, and be received into heaven.

Afterward Ahriman himself and all in the Duzahk shall be purified by this fire, all evil be consumed, and all darkness banished.

From the extinct fire there will come a more beautiful earth, pure and perfect, and destined to be eternal.

* * * * *

Having given this account of the Parsi system, in its later development, let us say that it was not an invention of Zoroaster, nor of any one else.  Religions are not invented:  they grow.  Even the religion of Mohammed grew out of pre-existent beliefs.  The founder of a religion does not invent it, but gives it form.  It crystallizes around his own deeper thought.  So, in the time of Zoroaster, the popular imagination had filled nature with powers and presences, and given them names, and placed them in the heavens.  For, as Schiller says:—­

                          “’Tis not merely
    The human being’s pride which peoples space
    With life and mystical predominance;
    For also for the stricken heart of Love,
    This visible nature and this lower world
    Are all too common.”

Zoroaster organized into clearer thought the pre-existing myths, and inspired them with moral ideas and vital power.

Sec. 8.  Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas.

That the Vedic religion and that of the Avesta arose out of an earlier Aryan religion, monotheistic in its central element, but with a tendency to immerse the Deity in nature, seems evident from the investigations of Pictet and other scholars.  This primitive religion of the Aryan race diverged early in two directions, represented by the Veda and the Avesta.  Yet each retains much in common with the other.  The names of the powers, Indra, Sura, Naoghaithya, are in both systems.  In the Veda they are gods, in the Avesta evil spirits.  Indra, worshipped throughout the Rig-Veda as one of the highest deities, appears in the Avesta as an evil being.[143] Sura (Cura), one of the most ancient names of Shiva, is also denounced and opposed in the Avesta[144] as a Daeva, or Dew.  And the third (Naoghaithya, Naouhaiti), also an evil spirit in the Avesta, is the Nasatya of the Veda,[145] one of the Acvinas or twins who precede the Dawn.