he evidently regards this work as the mature fruit of all his scientific studies, and as their final answer to the supreme question of philosophy. As he has now reached the evening of life, when the varied picture of the world loses the richness of its colouring in the shades of twilight, his whole attention naturally turns to the stars which are beginning to appear, to the hopes and presentiments of a new existence. The work is characterised by a religious tone; and the language of reason alternates with the tremulous cadences of a touched heart. We do not see why the chords of feeling should not vibrate in a work concerning the vital question of humanity; too entire an abstraction from the claims of sentiment not unfrequently confuses the understanding. The metaphysical premisses in favour of personal immortality, which Dr. Fichte undertakes to consolidate empirically and inductively, are nearly as follows:-God, as selfconscious mind, includes within Himself a teleologically-ordained system of individual existences. Whenever the course of cosmical development offers the possibility, these existences emerge from their merely ideal condition and spontaneously assume reality. The human mind, always individual and spontaneous, seizes on the forces of nature which it finds in operation, uses them as means of embodiment and manifestation, and by the spontaneous creation of its corporeal organisation works out its own selfconsciousness. As an everlasting monad it passes through a series of progressive phases, in which it gradually develops the basis of its nature, until it attains its perfect form. The reciprocal activity of the individual essences, and the consequent manifestation of their qualities give rise to the spectacle of this changing world, which is, however, based upon an unchanging world. The different parts of the universe are all teleologically ordered and adapted, and the less perfect beings are conditions of and means for the higher. But the highest thing which we know of empirically is the human mind, which serves no other existing thing as a means, or ladder to life, but is in this respect its own end. It is only subordinate to the Divine Mind which irradiates it with the eternal ideas of the beautiful, the true and the good, and thus keeps up its impulse towards culture and perfection. But the human spirit is also destined to personal association and union with God. This is a consequence of the fact of religious feeling. This union produces in it a supernatural wisdom and force of will. Fichte's view of the universe thus ends in Theosophy. In these assumptions personal existence in a future state is, no doubt, virtually contained; but the only question is, how the assumptions themselves are established? His whole system, beginning with his Anthropology and Psychology, is directed towards this proof.

In the work before us, he resumes, with less conciseness than might be wished, all the results which he has previously obtained. Immortality, he thinks, if it have any reality, must exhibit unequivocal traces in the present state of human consciousness; and he reviews a number of pyschological phenomena, which he takes pains to explain as direct expressions of an instinctive consciousness of immortality. We cannot say that he is always successful. What we want here are premisses established by experience, and conclusions derived by correct analogy. Thus, from the recognised fact that in each animated being there is an accurate agreement between instincts and faculties, external organs and conditions of life, it may be concluded that man is destined for a future state of personal existence. In refuting the views of his opponents, Dr. Fichte leaves much to be desired, and is himself inclined to build up an inexplicable and untenable dualism between soul and body, substance and appearance. He is most successful in his proof that the essential attribute of the soul is its power of giving birth to consciousness. The whole series of arguments leads finally to a philosophy of history, for the whole present life of the human race is a most weighty argument for its future existence. For here also the argument from final causes obliges us to assume the future existence of the soul, as the explanation of its non-attainment of the ideal aims which are natural to man, and of the discordance between merit and reward. In sum Fichte arrived at the conviction that no conclusive logical proofs of immortality are to be found, and that the acceptance of the doctrine depends rather on a natural sentiment, unclouded by the sceptical objections of reflection, and upheld by the moral conscience."

Correspondence.

PUNCH ON SPIRIT POETRY.

To the Editor of "The Spiritual Magazine."

SIR, I see that our old friend, Punch, has noticed my last communication to you, giving a specimen or two of spirit-poetry. A few years ago I should have said, "has done me the honour to notice," &c., but that is all over nowpoor Punch! But the notice I allude to so admirably illustrates the crass ignorance and desperate unfairness of a certain class of critics who can only grin, that I ask the attention of your readers to it. The point of my letter, was that the verses I gave were so written at first as to make it clear to all who could judge of evidence that they were not composed by the person who held the pencil, unless indeed this person (a young lady of education and position), was a hypocrite as absurd as she was wicked. This point the writer in Punch says nothing about, but pretends that I gave the poetry as something so wonderful in itself as to prove its spirit-origin. This could only have been done by one who deliberately intended to cheat his readers. He will

see this letter, but he will keep it quiet; or, if his employers find him out, both he and they will conspire to let it rest, thinking, perhaps, that we are at their mercy: though, on this point, it would, perhaps, astonish them to know how wide-spread is an honest faith in that which they pretend to despise, and, I will add, how much more widely known than they think are the facts they are vainly trying to burk.

I will only add that while I do not think the verses I sent are very wonderful in themselves, I think them worthy of any cultivated and pure-minded being; and I think that many readers, even of Punch, will feel with me that the very verse it has quoted is the only thing worth reading in the insipid notice I refer to, and that it stands there a rebuke to the vacant laugh of the buffoon and the coarse grin of the fool. Yours faithfully,

THE AUTHOR OF "SIX MONTHS' EXPERIENCE AT HOME
OF SPIRIT-COMMUNION."

:

P.S.-The verse quoted by Punch is :

"When spirits guide your trembling souls,
And love flows down incessantly,

Though loud on earth the thunder rolls,
In Heaven you'll rest eternally."

THE SPIRIT HOPE.

Dear spirits, ye have pass'd from earth,
And borne the throes of second birth;
We may not feel, nor see, nor hear,
Yet know ye to be ever near.

Instinctive faith, revealèd truth,

Teach childhood, manhood, age and youth,
That love is of the soul and lives,
When Death not death but freedom gives.

Help us, ye messengers of God,
To use His staff and bear His rod;
Help us to keep our hearts from rust,
By fervid faith and hopeful trust.
Ye hear our prayer, and ye too pray,
For guard and guidance on our way
Through life, in solemn thought and talk,
To walk as He would have us walk.

S. C. H.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

FEBRUARY, 1868.

THE SPIRITUALISM OF ANCIENT EGYPT: THE GREAT PYRAMID: WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF ITS

CONSTRUCTION?

By THOMAS Brevior.

EGYPT is the sphinx of history: the land of mystery and marvel, of astrology, alchemy, magic; the cradle of civilization, the birth-place of arts and sciences;-of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, navigation; whilst, to quote the words of Bunsen, "the originality and eminence of the ancient Egyptians in architecture, in plastic art, in monumental painting and in symbol-writing, every line, curve and point conveying a definite idea, are universally acknowledged." Egypt was a great empire— A land of just and old renown

famous for its wisdom ere Israel was a people, or "the father of the faithful" wandered with his flocks over the Plains of Mamre. No wonder that the Jews who so long dwelt in E as a subject race, and their great lawgiver-educated a Court of the Pharoahs, initiated into the occult lore priesthood, should have brought thence many of the customs, rites, ceremonies, laws and institutions; later day the philosophers of Greece should thither and spent years in studying the wisdom in intercourse with its learned men.

For that wisdom extended not only to m physical science and of the arts, but to civil gover religion-the latter not as misunderstood, corru in its diffusion by the ignorant multitude in

N.S.-III.

as taught in their earlier books and mysteries, and as conceived by the initiated. These early thinkers were close observers and careful students of both the macrocosm and the microcosm; they had deep moral discernment and spiritual intuition; were profoundly impressed with the mystery of life and organization;—with the awe, the beauty, and the majesty of Nature; the order and grandeur of creative power as manifested in the clear shining stars whose position and movements they so diligently studied-in the beneficent majestic mighty river, whose overflow fertilized their land and brought plenty to their homes; and its enemy and theirs the arid desert ;—the respective types of the perpetual conflict between good and evil which they saw around them, and the mystery of which they so deeply pondered. Their conceptions of God, of the moral government of the world, of the Soul and the Future Life, and the relation between man's character and his destiny, shew them to have been a solemn serious-minded thoughtful people; as Herodotus expressly affirms given to religion above all the nations of antiquity. Their astrology was in part spiritual. Their magic was theurgic. Brücker says: it consisted in the performance of certain religious ceremonies or incantations, which were supposed, through the agency of good dæmons, to produce supernatural effects." They believed that every human being had an attendant spirit from birth to death that beneficent spirits preserved health, while evil spir entered into men and produced fits and other diseases. T belief (not unlike the doctrine of Swedenborg) was proł connected with their magnetic treatment of the sick; w.. clairvoyance and entrancement, with which they evidently were familiar, and all of which they associated with religion. Especially were they engrossed with the idea of the Future State, and in preparation for it. As Harriet Martineau remarks-"The unseen world became all in all to them; and the visible world and present life of little more importance than as the necessary introduction to the higher and greater." They conceived creation to consist of three grand departments. First, 'came the earth, or zone of trial, where men live on probation; next, was the atmosphere, or zone of temporal punishment and purification, where men are afflicted for their sins; the third realm was the zone of blessedness-the serene heaven, where the good dwell for ever in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, "The Egyptians represented the universe in two circles, one within the other, and a serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them;" thus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity. Not a little of the thought of old Egypt may indeed be traced under other names and