souls immediately to the Universal Spirit; but those which had contracted much defilement, were sent into a succession of other bodies, to be purged and purified, before they returned to their parent substance.

Å doctrine similar to this of Plato, has been held from time immemorial by the Bramins in India, whose sacred books teach, "That intellect is a portion of the great soul of the Universe, breathed into all creatures, to animate them for a certain time; that after death it animates other bodies, or returns like a drop into that unbounded ocean from which it first arose; that the souls of men are distinguished from those of other animals, by being endowed with reason and with a consciousness of right and wrong; and that the soul of him who adheres to right as far as his powers extend, is at death absorbed into that divine essence, never more to reanimate flesh. On the other hand, the souls of those who do evil, are not at death disengaged from all the elements; but are immediately clothed with a body of fire, air, and akash (a kind of celestial element, through which, the planets move, and which makes no resistance) in which they are for a time punished in hell. After the season of their grief is over, they reanimate other bodies; and when they arrive through these transmigrations at a state of purity, they are absorbed into God, where all passions are utterly unknown, and where consciousness is lost in bliss.”

Whether the Greeks derived their notions of the divinity and transmigration of souls from the east, or whether both they and the Bramins brought the same doctrines at different periods from Egypt, it is foreign from the purpose of this article to inquire. Certain it is, that the philosophers of Greece and India argued in the very same manner, and upon the very same principles, for the natural immortality of the soul; and that the immortality which they taught was wholly incompatible with God's moral government of the world, and with a future state of rewards and punishments. That this is true of the doctrine of the Bramins, is evident from the last quoted sentence for if the soul, when absorbed into the Divine essence, loses all consciousness of what it did and suffered in the body, it cannot possibly be rewarded for its virtues

practised upon earth. That the philosophers of Greece taught the same cessation of consciousness, might be inferred with the utmost certainty, even though we had not Aristotle's express declaration to that purpose: for as they all believed their souls to have existed before they were infused into their bodies, and as each must have been conscious that he remembered nothing of his former state, it was impossible to avoid concluding, that in the future state of his soul as little would be remembered of the present. Accordingly Aristotle teaches, that "the agent intellect only is immortal and eternal, but the passive corruptible;" and Warburton has completely proved, that by the agent intellect is meant the substance of the soul, and by the passive its particular perceptions.

But because the human soul may, for any thing that we see to the contrary, subsist, and think, and act, in a separate state, it does not therefore necessarily follow that it will do so; and every thing that we know of its nature and its energies leads us to think, that without some kind of body by which to act as by an instrument, all its powers would continue dormant. There is not the shadow of a reason to suppose that it existed and was conscious in a prior state; and as its memory at present unquestionably depends upon the state of the brain, there is all the evidence of which the case will admit, that if it should subsist in a future state divested of all body, though it might be endowed with new and enlarged powers of perception, it could have no recollection of what it did and suffered in this world, and therefore would not be a fit object either of reward or of punishment. This consideration has compelled many thinking men, both Pagans and Christians, to suppose that at death the soul carries with it a fine material vehicle, which is its immediate sensorium in this world, and continues to be the seat of his recollection in, the next. Such, we have seen, was the opinion of Mr. Wollaston and Dr. Hartley; it was likewise the opinion of Cudworth and Locke, who held that the Supreme Being alone is the only mind wholly separated from matter; and it is an opinion which even Dr. Clarke, one of the ablest advocates for immaterialism, would not venture positively to deny.

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SIAM. The Siamese maintain the doctrine of transmigration, believing in a preëxistent state, and that they shall pass into other bodies till they are sufficiently purified to be received into Paradise. That the soul is material but not subject to the touch; that no man will be eternally punished; that the good, after several transmigrations, will enjoy perpetual happiness; but that those who are not reformed, will transmigrate to all eternity.

66

FRANCIS BACON,

ON SUPERSTITION.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such a man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say there was one Plutarch, that would eat his children as soon as they were born;" as the poets speak of Saturn: and, as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men; therefore atheism did never perturb states: for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no farther, and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times: but superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new "primum mobile," that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed

order.

THOMAS MORE'S

UTOPIA, OR THE HAPPY REPUBLIC.

They define virtue thus, that it is a living according to Nature, and think that we are made by God for that end. They do believe that a man does then follow the dictates of Nature, when he pursues or avoids things according to the direction of reason: they say, that the first dictate of reason is, the kindling in us a love and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom we owe both all that we have, and all that we can ever hope for. In the next place, reason directs us to keep our minds as free of passion, and as cheerful as we can; and that we should consider ourselves as bound by the ties of good nature and humanity, to use our utmost endeavors to help forward the happiness of all other persons; for there was never any man that was such a morose and severe pursuer of virtue, and such an enemy to pleasure, that though he set hard rules to men to undergo much pain, many watchings, and other rigors, yet did not at the same time advise them to do all they could in order to the relieving and easing such people as were miserable; and did not represent it as a mark of a laudable temper, that it was gentle and good natured; and they infer from thence, that if a man ought to advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind, there being no virtue more proper and peculiar to our nature, than to ease the miseries of others, to free them from trouble and anxiety in furnishing them with the comforts of life, that consist in pleasure; Nature does much more vigorously lead him to do all this for himself. A life of pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not only not to assist others in their pursuit of it, but on the contrary, to keep them from it all we can, as from that which is hurtful and deadly to them; or if it is a good thing, so that we not only may, but ought to help others to it, why then ought not a man to begin with himself? Since no man can be more bound to look after the good of another, than after his own; for Nature cannot direct us to be good and kind to others, and yet at the same time to be unmerciful and cruel to ourselves. Thus as they define virtue to be a living according to Nature, so

they reckon that Nature sets all people on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do.

They do also observe, that in order to the supporting the pleasures of life, Nature inclines us to enter into society; for there is no man so much raised above the rest of mankind, that he should be the only favorite of Nature, which on the contrary seems to have levelled all those together that belong to the same species. Upon this they infer that no man ought to seek his own conveniences so eagerly, that thereby he should prejudice others; and therefore they think that not only all agreements between private persons ought to be observed, but likewise that all those laws ought to be kept, which either a good prince has published in due form, or to which a people, that is neither oppressed with tyranny nor circumvented by fraud, has consented, for distributing those conveniences of life which afford us all our pleasures.

They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantages, as far as the laws allow it. They account it piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns; but they think it unjust for a man to seek for his own pleasure, by snatching another man's pleasures from him. And on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul, for a man to dispense with his own advantage for the good of others; and that by so doing, a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another; for as he may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections that one makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has so obliged, give the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself.

Thus upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness: and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. And thus they cautiously limit pleasure, only to those appetites

which Nature leads us; for they reckon that Nature leads us only to those delights to which reason as well as

26.