has been to conciliate discordant opinions, and to connect popular belief with philosophy. But I have also aimed at a much higher mark; and have followed up the aim through the general train of reasoning introduced into the preceding divisions of this course of instruction. I have endeavoured to show, that though every part of the visible creation is transient and imperfect, every part is in a state of progression, and striving at something more perfect than itself; that the whole unfolds to us a beautiful scale of ascension, every division harmoniously playing into every other division, and, with the nicest adjustment, preparing for its furtherance. The mineral kingdom lays a foundation for the vegetable, the vegetable for the animal: infancy for youth, youth for manhood, and manhood for the wisdom of hoary hairs. We have hence strong ground, independently of that furnished us by Revelation, for concluding that the scene will not end here: that we are but upon the threshold of a vast and incomprehensible scheme, that will reach beyond the present world and run coeval with eternity. The admirable Bishop of Durham, to whose writings I have already occasionally adverted, pursues this argument with great force in his immortal Analogy, and shows, with impressive perspicuity, the general coincidence of design that runs throughout the natural and the moral government of Providence, all equally leading to a future and more perfect state of things. "The natural and moral constitution and government of the world,” says he, "are so connected as to make up together but one scheme; and it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried on merely in subserviency to the latter; as the vegetable is for the animal, and organized bodies for minds. Every act, therefore, of divine justice and goodness may be supposed to look much beyond itself, and its immediate object may have some reference to other parts of God's moral administration and to a genuine moral plan; and every circumstance of this his moral government may be adjusted beforehand, with a view to the whole of it.-It is hence absurd, absurd to the degree of being ridiculous, if the subject were not of so serious a kind, for men to think themselves secure in a vicious life; or even in that immoral thoughtlessness, which far the greatest part of them are fallen into.”* LECTURE II. ON THE NATURE AND DURATION OF THE SOUL, AS EXPLAINED BY POPULAR TRADITIONS, AND VARIOUS PHIOSOPHICAL SPECULATIONS. WE have entered upon a subject in which human wisdom or imagination can afford us but very little aid; and I have already observed, that I have rather touched upon it, in order that, with suitable modesty, we may know and acknowledge our own weakness, and apply to the only source from which we can derive any real information concerning it, than to support any hypothesis that can be deduced from either physical or metaphysical investigations. "The science of abstruse learning," observes Mr. Tucker, and no man was ever better qualified to give an opinion upon it, "when completely attained, is like Achilles's spear, that healed the wounds it had made before. It casts no additional light upon the paths of life, but disperses the clouds with which it had overspread them. It advances not the traveller one step in his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he had wandered." But if it do not discover new truths, it prepares, or should prepare, the mind for apprehending those that are already in existence with a greater facility, and far more accurately appreciating their value. In our last lecture we took a glance at several of the discordant opinions, * Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i. ch. vii. p. 148, 149. 165. edit. 1802. supported respectively by men of the deepest learning and research, that have been offered in relation to the essence of the mind or soul; and showed by a scale of analysis conducted through all the most striking modifications of that plastic and fugitive substance which composes the whole of the visible world, that all such discussions must be necessarily uncertain, and considerably less likely to be productive of truth than of error. But there is a question of far more consequence to us than the nature of the soul's essence, and that is, the nature of its duration. Is the soul immortal? Is it capable of a separate existence? Does it perish with the body as a part of it? Or, if a distinct principle, does it vanish into nothingness as soon as the separation takes place? What does philosophy offer us upon this subject? This, too, has been studied from age to age; the wisest of mankind have tried it in every possible direction: new opinions have been started, and old opinions revived; and what, after all, is the upshot? The reply is as humiliating as in the former case: vanity of vanities, and nothing more; utter doubt and indecision,-hope perpetually neutralized by fear. If we turn to the oldest hypotheses of the East,-to the Vedas of the Brahmins and the Zendavesta of the Parsees,-to those venerable but fanciful stores of learning, from which many of the earliest Greek schools drew their first draughts of metaphysical science, we shall find, indeed, a full acknowledg ment of the immortality of the soul, but only upon the sublime and mystical doctrine of emanation and immanation, as a part of the great soul of the universe; issuing from it at birth, and resorbed into it upon the death of the body; and hence altogether incapable of individual being, or a separate state of existence. If we turn from Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan to Arabia, to the fragrant groves and learned shades of Dedan and Teman, from which it is certain that Persia, and highly probable that Hindostan, derived its first polite literature, we shall find the entire subject left in as blank and barren a silence, as the deserts by which they are surrounded; or, if touched upon, only touched upon to betray doubt, and sometimes disbelief. The tradition, indeed, of a future state of retributive justice seems to have reached the schools of this part of the world, and to have been generally, though perhaps not universally, accredited; but the future existence it alludes to is that of a resurrection of the body, and not of a survival of the soul after the body's dissolution. The oldest work that has descended to us from this quarter (and there is little doubt that it is the oldest, or one of the oldest works in existence,*) is that astonishing and transcendent composition, the book of Job:a work that ought assuredly to raise the genius of Idumea above that of Greece, and that of itself is demonstrative of the indefatigable spirit with which the deepest as well as the most polished sciences were pursued in this region, during what may be comparatively called the youth and dayspring of the world. Yet in this sublime and magnificent poem, replete with all the learning and wisdom of the age, the doctrine upon the subject before us is merely as I have just stated it, a patriarchal or traditionary belief of a future state of retributive justice, not by the natural immortality of the soul, but by a resurrection of the body. And the same general idea has for the most part descended in the same country to the present day; for the Alcoran, which is perpetually appealing to the latter fact, leaves the former almost untouched, and altogether in a state of indecision, whence the expounders of the Islam scriptures, both Sonnites and Motazzalites, or orthodox and heterodox, are divided upon the subject, some embracing and others rejecting it. And it is hence curious to observe the different grounds appealed to in favour of a future existence, in the most learned regions of the East: the Hindoo philosophers totally and universally denying a resurrection of the body, and supporting the doctrine alone upon the natural immortality of the soul, and the Arabian philosophers passing over the immortality of the soul, and resting it alone upon a resurrection of the body. The schools of Greece, as I have already observed, derived their earliest *Ser. I. Lect. x. metaphysics from the gymnosophists of India; and hence, like the latter, while for the most part they contended for the immortal and incorruptible nature of the soul, they in like manner overlooked or reprobated the doctrine of a resurrection of the body. On which account, when St. Paul, with an equal degree of address and eloquence, introduced this subject into his discourse in the Agora or great square of Athens, the philosophers that listened to it carried him to Areopagus, and inquired what the new doctrine was of which he had been speaking to the people. The earliest Greek schools, therefore, having derived this tenet from an Indian source, believed it, for the most part, after the Indian manner. And hence, though they admitted the immortality of the soul, they had very confused ideas of its mode of existence; and the greater number of them believed it, like the Hindoos, to be resorbed, after the present life, into the great soul of the world, or the creative spirit, and consequently to have no individual being whatsoever. Such, more especially, was the doctrine of Orpheus and of the Stoics; and such, in its ultimate tendency, that of the Pythagoreans, who, though they conceived that the soul had, for a certain period, an individual being, sometimes involved in a cloudy vehicle, and sleeping in the regions of the dead, and sometimes sent back to inhabit some other body, either brutal or human, conceived also that at length it would return to the eternal source from which it had issued, and for ever lose all personal existence in its essential fruition; a doctrine, under every variety, derived from the colleges of the East. I have said that this principle was imported by the Pythagorists, and the Greek schools in general, from the philosophy of India. The slightest dip into the Vedas will be a sufficient proof of this. Let us take the following splendid verse as an example, upon which the Vedantis peculiarly pride themselves, and which they have, not without reason, denominated the Gayatri, or most holy verse. "Let us adore the supremacy of that divine sun the Bhargas, or godhead, who illuminates all, who recreates all, FROM WHOM ALL HAVE PROCEEDED, TO WHOM ALL MUST RETURN, whom we invoke to direct our understandings aright in our progress towards his holy seat."* The doctrine of the later Platonists was precisely of the same kind, and it was very extensively imbibed, with the general principles of the Platonic theory, by the poets and philosophers who flourished at the period of the revival of literature. Lorenzo de Medici is well known to have been warmly attached to this sublime mysticism; yet he has made it a foundation for some of the sweetest and most elevated devotional poetry that the world possesses. His magnificent address to the Supreme Being has seldom been equalled. I cannot quote it before a popular audience in its original, but I will beg your acceptance of the following imperfect translation of two of its stanzas, that you may have some glance into its merit: Father Supreme! O let me climb That sacred seat, and mark sublime Fount, whence each good, each pleasure flows, The radiant heaven thy presence throws! O, lose me in the light above! Flee, flee, ye mists! let earth depart: Thou art the source, the guide, the goal; * Sir Wm. Jones, vi. p. 417. Monti la mente, e vegga el vivo fonte, While such, however, were the philosophical traditions, the popular tradition appears to have been of a different kind, and as much more ancient as it was more extensive. It taught that the disimbodied spirit becomes a ghost as soon as it is separated from the corporeal frame; a thin, misty, or aerial form, somewhat larger than life, with a feeble voice, shadowy limbs; knowledge superior to what was possessed while in the flesh; capable, under particular circumstances, of rendering itself visible; and retaining so much of its former features as to be recognised upon its apparition; in a few instances wandering about for a certain period of time after death, but for the most part conveyed to a common receptacle situated in the interior of the earth, and denominated scheol (1), hades (äcns), hell, or the world of shades. Such was the general belief of the multitude in almost all countries from a very early period of time; with this difference, that the hades of various nations was supposed to exist in some remote situation on the surface of the earth, and that of others in the clouds. The first of these modifications of the general tradition is still to be traced among many of the African tribes, and perhaps all the aboriginal tribes of North America. That most excellent man, William Penn, who appears, with some singularities, to have united in his character as much moral goodness, natural eloquence, and legislative wisdom, as ever fell to the lot of any one, has sufficiently noticed this fact, in regard to the American tribes, in his valuable account of the country, addressed to "The Free Society of Traders of Pennsylvania," drawn up from an extensive and actual survey, and constituting, so far as it goes, one of the most important and authentic documents we possess. "These poor people," says he, are under a dark night in things relating to religion, to be sure, the tradition of it: yet they believe a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics; for they say there is a great king who made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither, where they shall live again."* And it is upon the faith of this description that Mr. Pope drew up that admirable and well-known picture of the same tradition, that occurs in the first epistle of his Essay on Man, and is known to every one. 66 Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind, Some happier island in the wat'ry waste; Where slaves once more their native land behold, The tradition which describes the hades, or invisible world, as seated in the clouds, was chiefly common to the Celtic tribes, and particularly to that which at an early age peopled North Britain. It is by far the most refined and picturesque idea that antiquity has offered upon the subject, and which has consequently been productive, not only of the most sublime, but of the most pathetic descriptions to which the general tradition has given rise under any form. The Celtic bards are full of this imagery; and it is hence a chief characteristic in the genuine productions of Ossian, which, in consequence, assume a still higher importance as historical records than as fragments of exquisite poetry. Let me, in proof of this, quote his fine delineation of the spirit of Crugal from a passage in the second book of Fingal, one of his best Fuga le nebbie, e le terrestre mole Leva da me, e splendi in la tua luce; Tu se' quel sommo ben che chiascun vuole ; A té dolce riposo si conduce, E te come suo fin, vede ogni pio; Tu se' principio, portatore e duce, La vita, e 'l termino, Tu sol Magno Dio. * Clarkson's Life of Wm. Penn, vol. i. p. 391. authenticated poems, premising that the importance of the errand, which is to warn his friends, "the sons of green Erin," of impending destruction, and to advise them to save themselves by retreat, sufficiently justifies the apparition. “A dark red stream of fire comes down from the hill. Crugal sat upon the beam: he that lately fell by the hand of Swaran striving in the battle of heroes. His face is like the beam of the setting moon: his robes are of the clouds of the hill: his eyes are like two decaying flames. Dark is the wound on his breast. The stars dim-twinkled through his form; and his voice was like the sound of a distant stream. Dim and in tears he stood, and stretched his pale hand over the hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, like the gale of the reedy Lego. My ghost, O Connal! is on my native hills, but my corse is on the sands of Ullin. Thou shalt never talk with Crugal, nor find his lone steps on the heath. I am light as the blast of Cromla, and I move like the shadow of mist. Connal, son of Colgar! I see the dark cloud of death. It hovers over the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin shall fall. Remove from the field of ghosts.' Like the darkened moon, he retired in the midst of the whistling blast." "Trenmor Let us take another very brief but very beautiful example. came from his hill at the voice of his mighty son. A cloud, like the steed of the stranger, supported his airy limbs. His robe is of the mist of Lano, that brings death to the people. His sword is a green meteor half extinguished. His face is without form and dark. He sighed thrice over the hero; and thrice the winds of the night roared around. Many were his words to Oscar. He slowly vanished, like a mist that melts on the sunny hill." The idea of his still pursuing his accustomed occupation of riding with his glittering sword (its glitter now half-extinguished, and of a green hue) on the steed of the stranger-a steed won in battle-his own limbs rendered airy, and the steed dissolved into the semblance of a cloud-is not only exquisite as a piece of poetic painting but as a fact consonant with the popular tradition of all other countries, which uniformly allotted to the shades or ghosts of their respective heroes their former passions and inclinations, the pastimes or employments to which they had devoted themselves while on earth, and the arms or implements they had chiefly made use of. Thus, the Scandinavian bard, Lodbrog, while singing his own death-song, literally translated from the Runic into Latin by Olaus Wormius, and transferring, in like manner, the pursuits of his life to his pursuits after death: "In the halls of our father Balder I know seats are prepared, where we shall soon drink all out of the hollow sculls of our enemies. In the house of the mighty Odin no brave man laments death. I come not with the voice of despair to Odin's hall."† The same popular belief was common to the Greeks and Romans. Thus, Eneas, according to Virgil, in his descent to the infernal regions, beholds the shades of the Trojan heroes still panting for fame, and amusing themselves with the martial exercises to which they had been accustomed, and with airy semblances of horses, arms, and chariots: The chief surveyed full many a shadowy car, Virgil, while true to the tradition of his country, is well known to have copied his description from Homer; and in Homer's time the same popular See Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland appointed to inquire into the Nature and Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, drawn up, according to the Directions of the Committee, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq. its Convener or Chairman, p. 153, and p. 190-260. † See Blair's Dissertation on Ossian. Arma procul, currusque virûm miratur inanes. |