111.]

NATURE OF THE SOUL.

61

portion of the brain it was not unfrequently confounded with animal life: Zeno believed the soul to be made of fire: Aristoxenus, the musician, thought it consisted in the general combination of feelings which he designates harmony: Xenocrates gave it no shape, but seems to have anticipated the modern school of scepticism, by making it consist in organization: Plato considered the soul as composed of three facultiesintelligence, desire, and anger, which he places respectively in the head, the heart, and the breast. And hence I suspect the idea to have originated in the theological schools of Rome, that the soul was made up of three powers—the will, the memory, and the understanding. There were other philosophers who considered the soul to be a substance of grosser materials; but we will forbear to touch upon the material systems. None of these definitions, however, satisfied the capacious mind of Aristotle: he discarded all the four elements as forming any portion of the human soul, and imagined a fifth element, for which he was obliged to invent a name, and, by induction, we perceive in his subtle inventions something of an immortality 1.

If, however, we assign the first place in pagan

1 Vide Ciceron. Tusculan. Quæstiones, cap. ix. &c. but consult Brucker Hist. Critic. Philosophiae. Par. ii. lib. ii. xv. tom. i. p. 820. edit. Lipsic 1742.

62

DOCTRINES OF PYTHAGORAS.

[LECT.

theology to the schools of Plato and Aristotle : in ethics, to the systems of Socrates and the Stoics we may safely consider the Italian sect, founded by Pythagoras, as the great school of that branch of heathen philosophy which we designate, for the sake of convenience, their metaphysics. This extraordinary man, in his speculations upon a future state, seemed to refine upon error until he touched the borders of truth. He thought that man, in the acquisition of happiness, should seek to be free from all impurity of the flesh "The invisible Olympus, or Heaven, admits nothing that is defiled; therefore vices are to be avoided, and virtues to be sought after -man is preserved by the mercies of God; therefore the Deity is to be worshipped, and the superior powers to be invoked that they would complete our imperfect work; but since nothing material or even corporeally mingled, can be received into this abode of the blessed, it is necessary first to die, and wholly to put off this body, before we can be admitted to the society of the gods '.' The nature of the soul, therefore, according to this doctrine, is immateriate, and capable of such complete purification from bodily defilements, as to be fitted for admission into the

1 Vid. Brucker Hist. Critic Philosoph. tom. i. p. 1091. Edit. citat.; and Stanley's History of Philosophy. Part ix. p. 427. Edit. London, folio. 1701.

III.]

DOCTRINES OF PYTHAGORAS.

63

presence of the Deity. We cannot but admire this sublime effect of unassisted reason: we seem to be bordering upon that life and immortality which has been brought to light in the Gospel. By these and similar passages to be found in the Greek writers (reiterated by the Roman philosophers, especially by Cicero), some have been misled as to the general belief of the heathens on this head. Plato informs us that the doctrine taught by Socrates concerning the soul's immortality, met with little credit among men : through the theories of Aristotle it is easy to discover his incredulity and even with Cicero, it seems rather to have been a subject for his rhetoric, than a source of consolation through belief of it in his afflictions: Julius Cæsar considered those things to be fables, which are related concerning the "Inferi,” where evil men, far from the mansions of the good, are confined to dreary abodes and places filled with horrors: and Pliny designates all such speculations as childish and senseless fictions of mortals who aspire to an immortal

1 "Bene et composite C. Cæsar paullo ante in hoc ordine de vitâ et morte disseruit; falsa, credo, existumans quæ de inferis memorantur: diverso itinere malos a bonis loca tetra, inculta fœda atque formidolosa habere (vel habitare.)" Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. li. (verba Catonis.) Compare Cicero's Letter to Sulpicius.

64

A FUTURE STATE IMPERFECTLY

[LECT.

existence1. These passages, however, prove in some measure the popular credulity, as well as the infidelity of the philosopher; and it was not, as we have said, that they rejected altogether the doctrine of a future state, but that they were in error and confusion as to how much of it they should believe. The foundation of this error was laid in the Pythagorean notion of the nature of the soul, and the disposal of it after death. It was imagined that there was a Divine Spirit diffused through the whole of nature, which was as it were the soul of the universe 1. From this immense ocean of life, the soul of every man and animal dropped as it were in a particle; and, as it was impossible to annihilate that particle, the soul in its nature was immortal: it was immortal, therefore, both before its earthly existence and after; for according to this idea, the human soul was like the soul of the universe, being a portion of

1

1 Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 55. But on this subject, see Dr. Whitby's commentary on 1 Timothy i. 10.

2 Virgil. Æneid. vi. 713 et seq.. Ovid. Metamorph. xv. v. 153.-But Ovid does not faithfully deliver the doctrines of Pythagoras. Cæsar found the doctrine of transmigration among the Gallic Druids, "imprimis hoc volunt persuadere non interire animas, sed ab aliis post mortem transire ad alios atque hoc maxime ad virtutem excitari putant metu mortis neglecto."-Cæsar de bello Gallic. vi.

III.]

DISCERNED BY THE HEATHEN.

it, uncreate.

65

When this particle of divine life had ceased to animate one body, it either returned to its great Fountain, or passed into some other body, which latter opinion, called transmigration or metempsychosis, has generally been attributed to Pythagoras, but without sufficient authority. It might rather be called the doctrine of those who either misunderstood or wilfully misrepresented his system; for this philosopher delivers a more salutary doctrine. He taught, that the soul would return to the elements from which it descended, after first undergoing a purgatorial process. If a man when he hath put off his body remain burdened with vices, he begins to be miserable, which misery after death, Pythagoras divides into two kinds the one is of a less degree than the other, that is, it is nearer happiness, so that in the regions below the earth there are two mansions, the elysium or the purgatory possessed by those who are in course of time to ascend to the blessedness of heaven, and the Tartarus or Hell wherein the torments are endless. He also taught that it was possible for a man to live so justly, that when he died his soul might ascend directly to the pure sky, and at all events, the more a man could purify his soul in this life the less pain would he have to endure in purgatory. Now it may appear from a system

F