hundred and seventy-one millions of souls ;-six and a half millions of whom are Jews; one hundred and fifty millions are Mahometans; one hundred and seventy-five and a half millions are Christians; and six hundred and forty millions are Pagans. They harmonize scarcely in any thing; and yet they all harmonize in this1: that let the Deity assume what shape he will; and let the soul be of whatever nature it may; yet that the soul lives after the present state of existence. The Some of the Asiatic philosophers imagined souls to descend even into vegetables and minerals.2 Tartars had once a similar belief: and the Pharisees, who were fatalists, contradicting their own doctrine by acknowledging the free-agency of man, believed, that the soul emigrated into other bodies; the good into men, and the bad into beasts.* The Essenes believed in predestination; leaving man no immediate power over his own actions. They conceded the immortality of the soul, but not the resur Pomponatius of Mantua gained some reputation at Padua and Bologna, between the years 1490 and 1510, by writing a book entitled De Immortalitate Animi; in which he maintained the soul's immortality; though he denied the possibility of proving it by philosophical reasoning. Palerius of Veroli, also, wrote a poem on the same subject. But he was condemned to be burnt, for having spoken in favour of the Lutherans, and against the Inquisition. • Dubistan, Asiat. Miscel. 95. 3 Vide Marco Polo. b. ii. ch. xxvi. Also Hist. Gen. des Huns. tom. iii. p. 223. 4 Josephus, vol. i. c. 8. Acts, c. xxiii. 6. rection of the body.' The good, they conceived, were translated to the Fortunate Islands; the bad into subterranean caverns and passages. The natives of Great Benin have very imperfect ideas relative to the soul; but they also believe in its future existence. For when an European enquired of one of them, why he paid respect to his shadow, the negro answered by demanding, if it were possible, that he could be so ignorant, as not to know, that the shadow was a man's witness; who would hereafter bear testimony, not only of his virtues, but of his crimes and defects. V. The Indians imagined, that when the soul departed from the body, it returned to God its parent. Zeno and Zoroaster maintained the same opinion: and when Plotinus was dying, he said to a friend, who attended him, "The divine principle, which has animated me, is now about to return, and to unite itself to the divine Spirit, which animates the universe." The Egyptians,2 on the contrary, believed that the soul passed into quadrupeds, birds, and fishes; and, that after a certain era, it again animated the body of a 1 Christians believe, that the body will regenerate, as well as the soul. This was the belief, also, of the most ancient of Arabic writers.-" I know, that my Redeemer liveth; and that he shall stand, at the latter day, upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy the body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”* 2 Herod. lib. ii. c. 123. * Job, e. xix., v. 25, 26. VOL. IV. X man. This doctrine, was introduced into Greece by Pherecydes'; and into Italy by Pythagoras. The Soofees of Caubul are said to see and admire the Deity in every thing. Every object but him, say they, is illusion; every object being but a portion of his essence, which assumes an infinite variety of shapes; the soul forming an entire union with his substance.2 Cicero, who in another place3 discourses so admirably on immortality, believed, too, that the souls of good men were of divine extraction, and that at the period of death it became an essential part of the divine nature. There is a sect among the Mahometans, called the Zindikites, who believe neither in the providence of the sovereign power, nor in the immortality of the soul. But the four elements they believe to be the four essences, constituting the Deity-and that all things being compounded of them, all things are portions of the Deity himself. Spinoza, however, taught that God was neither infinite, intelligent, happy, nor perfect; he being but the natural virtue, or faculty, diffused in all creatures : That nothing is spiritual; that matter only exists, 3 Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. c. 16; and yet Cicero says, in another place, that the doctrine was delivered by tradition from all antiquity. • Somn. Scip. Elphinstone, p. 208, 4to. 3 Castos animos, puros, integros, incorruptos, bonis etiam studiis atque artibus expolitos, leni quodam ac facili lapsu ad Deos, id est, ad Naturam sui similem, pervolare.-Fragment Consolat. ex Lactantio.— "Then shall the dust return to the earth, as it was; and the spirit. shall return uuto the God, who gave it."-Ecclesiast. c. xii. v. 7. The Vedant of the Bramins inculcates the belief, that the soul of man after death shall be absorbed in the supreme, and be subject neither to" birth, nor death, reduction, or augmentation.”—Raymohun Roy. and its modifications; that all ideas, abstract and general, are material; that matter is the only Deity'; that every thing is a part of God, and God a part of <every thing; and that religion is a political engine, invented, and continued by governments, for the purpose of establishing and preserving harmony and propriety between the relative orders. From this it would appear, that Spinoza's ignorance was far worse than that of the Saxon noble of whom Edwin, King of Northumberland, enquired the nature of the soul, without any of its humility :-" Sire," returned the noble, "the more we reflect on its nature, the less are we able to explain its essence. We may compare it to the bird, which flew in at one of the windows, where your Majesty so lately dined, and immediately flew out at another. While it remained in the room, we knew something about it; but when it flew away, we knew not whence it came, nor whither it went. Thus, while the soul animates the body, we may know some of its properties; but when it separates itself from the body, as we know not whence it came, so we know not whither it is flown."2 VI. The inhabitants of New Zealand believe, that on the third day after interment, the heart separates ! Lubin of Westerstede contended for the existence of two co-eternal principles, God and nothing. The former the good, and the latter the evil principle of the universe. 2 Rapin, vol. i. b. iii. p. 70. From Bede, lib. ii. c. 13. * Vide his Hyper-metaphysical tract "Phosphorus, de Prima Causa et Natura Mali." from the body; and that a divinity, whom they call Ea-tooa, hovers over the grave, takes the heart, and carries it into the clouds." Many American Indians2 abstain from eating the blood of animals, because it contains the life and spirit of the heart. The Persians are said to leave one part of their graves open, from a belief, that the dead will be re-animated, and visited by angels, who will judge them, and appropriate their future state. Some Tartar tribes bury the best horse with a person deceased, in order that he may use him in the other world: and the Laplanders place a purse of money in the coffins of their friends, that the defunct may pay the porter at the gate of Paradise: while the Hindoo wife believes, that if she sacrifice herself on the funeral pile of her husband, she will enjoy with him eternal life. 3 Some of the ancient Scythians believed, that death was only a change of habitation :-the natives of the Tonga Islands imagine, that the lower orders of society have no souls; or that if they have one it dissolves with the body;-but that those of a higher rank go to Bolotoo, the residence of the gods. They believe, that the soul during life is not a distinct essence from the body, but the ethereal part of it; which part exists after death in Bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body. In Taheite the islanders believe, that the spirit of man is eaten by a bird, in passing through which it becomes purified; after which it Collins's New South Wales, p. 524. 2 Adair's Hist. American Indians, p. 134. |