The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

stence flitting across the landscape, from the shrouded ocean of birth, over the illuminated continent of experience, to the shrouded ocean of death. Who can linger there

f hope, but, as it draws near to the fatal bourne, takes on a mournful cast from the shadows of the unknown realm. The place

ry draught of

ut the bounds of

choly gat

h sympathet

glimmer of smiles and tears, and we are gone. But whence did we

the same inquiry, and been swept from his attempts at a theoretic solution of the problem into the real solution itself, while the constant refrain in the song of existence sounded behind him, "One generation

rom an eye That hath kept w

nvoke the intellect to its most piercing thoughts. They swell the heart to its utm

rlds life hover

morn upon the

we know that

we may be! The

ide rolls on,

s the old burs

foam of ages:

e but like some

bject of the derivation of the soul has been copiously discussed by hundreds of philosophers, physicians, and poets, from Vyasa to Des Cartes, from Galen to Ennemoser, from Orpheus to Henry More, from Aristotle to Frohschammer. German literature during the la

o the general soul. This form of faith, asserting the efflux of all subordinate existence out of one Supreme Being, seems sometimes to rest on an intuitive idea. It is spontaneously suggested whenever man confronts the phenomena of creation with reflective observation, and ponders the eternal round of birth and death.

lver

laughter from

ll thing

he supposed analytic similarity of the soul to God. Its freedom, consciousness, intelligence, love, correspond with what we regard as the attributes and essence of Deity. The inference, however unsound, is immediate, that souls are consubstantial with God, dissevered fragments of Him, sent into bodies. But, in actual effect, the chief recommendation of this view has probably been the variety of analogies and images under which it admits of presentation. The annual developments of vegetable life from the bosom of the earth, drops taken from a fountain and retaining its properties in their removal, the separation of the air into distinct breaths, the soil into individual atoms, the utterance of a tone gradually dying away in r

ouls from God, through life, back to God, must be similar. There are mysteries in connection with the soul that baffle the most lynx eyed investigation, and on which no known facts of the physical world can throw light. Secondly, the scheme of emanation depends on a vulgar error, belonging to the infancy of philosophic thought, and inconsistent with some necessary truths. It implies that God is separ

his idea does not propose any solution of the absolute origination of the soul, but only offers to account for its appearance on earth. The pre existence of souls has been most widely affirmed. Nearly the whole worl

tia Animarum. Beausobre, Hist. d

eory of development, which argues that the souls known to us, obtaining their first organic being out of the ground life of nature, have climbed up through a graduated series of births, from the merest elementary existence, to the plane of human nature. A gifted author, Dr. Hedge, has said concerning pre existence in these two methods of

pure ambro

apors of this s

d deal of the habitudes and dust of that tramp still sticking to them." The theory of development, deriving human souls by an ascension from the lower stages of rudimentary being, considered as a fanciful hypothesis or speculative toy, is interesting, and not destitute of plausible aspects. But, when investigated as a severe thesis, it is found devoid of proof. It is enough here to say that the most authoritative voices in science reject it, declaring that, though there is a development of progress in the plan of nature, from the more

teps from dog to man And crept into his nature. Are there not Those tha

atter. He seized these heavenly spies and encased them in fleshly prisons. And then, in order to preserve a permanent union of these celestial natures with matter, he contrived that their race should be propagated by the sexes. Whenever by the procreative act the germ body is prepared, a fiend hies from bale, or an angel stoops from bliss, or a demon darts from his hovering in the air

at hadst thou

t bower the sp

adise of such

ient spirits, till they long for the edge and hazard of earthly exposure, and wander down to dwell in fleshly bodies and breast the tempest of sin, strife, and sorrow, so as to give a fresh charm once more to the repose and exempted joys of the celestial realm. In this way, by a series of recurring lives below and above, novelty an

hold! the ve

s unsusceptib

angerous bo

r sharp vicissi

ity:" When, amid the sour exposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our appetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we forsake the b

their freedom, and were doomed to expiate their offences by a banished, imprisoned, and burdensome life on the earth. "The soul," Plutarch writes, "has removed, not from Athen

hole race were transported at once from their native shores in the sky to the convict land of this world. Sometimes the descent was attributed to the fresh fault of each individual, and was thought to be constantly happening. A soul tainted with impure desire, drawn downwards by corrupt material gravitation, hovering ove

but a sleep an

ises with us, o

lsewhere i

eth fro

tion and the heart. The fragmentary visions, broken snatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams, with which imperfectrecollection comes laden from our childish years and our nightly dreams, are referred by self pleasing fancy to some earlier and nobler existence. We solve the mysteries of experience by calling them the veiled vestiges of a bright life departed, pathetic waifs drifted to these intellectual shores over the surge of feeling from the wrecked orb of an anterior existence. It gratifies our pride to think the soul "a star travelled stranger," a disguised prince, who has passingly alighted on this globe in

nectarous pop

bor's dull L

lost angel

glory and the

ive and aspiring reveries, it should be needless to repeat. How baseless it is as a philoso

reference to Deity. Some writers have held that all souls were created by the Divine fiat at the beginning of the world, and laid up in a secret repository, whence they are drawn as occasion calls. The Talmudists say, "All souls were made during the six days of creation; a

ites his han

out a soul

ganized glo

deeps of

inions. It corresponds with the beautiful Greek myth of Prometheus, who is fabled to have made a human image from the dust of the ground, and then, by fire stolen from heaven, to have animated it with a living soul. So man, as to his body, is made of earthly clay; but the Promethean spark that forms his soul is the fresh breath of God. There is no objection to the real ground and essence of this theory, only to its form and accompaniments. It is purely anthropomorphitic; it conceives God as working, after the manner of a man, intermittently, arbitrarily. It insulates the origination of souls from the fixed course of nature, severs it from all connection wit

Anima et ejus

ss and are pleased to join in unlawful mixture, God is forced to stand a spectator of their vile impurities, stooping from hi

t how reconcile this proposition with the conception, entertained by many, that each new born soul is a fresh creation from the "substance," "spirit," or "breath" of God? Augustine writes to Jerome, asking him to solve this question.4 Tertullian, whose fervid mind was thoroughly imbued with materialistic notions, unhesitatingly cut this Gordian knot by asserting that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind, so that sinfulness and s

e germe

t make ingr

rld until the resurrection. Assembled in the presence of the angels, and endued with understanding, they confessed their dependence on God, and were then caused to return into the loins of their great ancestor. This is one of the most curious doctrines

ne stretch out to

easoning, but was arbitrarily created to rescue a dogma from otherwise inevitable rejection. It was the desperate clutch

en, No Pre Ex

stola

a, cap. x

, in 1655, a book called "Extraction of Soul: a sober and judicious inquiry to prove

, in which lay the souls of all her posterity, with infinitely little bodies, already existing."6 This form is as incredible as the other; for it equally implies a limitless distribution of souls from a limited deposit. As Whewell says, "This successive inclusion of germs (Einschachtelungs Theorie) implies that each soul contains an infinite number of germs."7 It necessarily excludes the formation of new spiritual su

ral development out of the actual contents of the first apple seed. No: but the truth is this. There was a power in the first apple seed to secure certain conditions; that is, to organize a certain status in which the plastic vegetative life of nature would posit new and similar powers and materials. So not all souls were latent in Adam's, but only an organizing power to secure the conditions on which the Divine Will that first began, would, in accord

ms of souls were created simultaneously with the formation of the material universe, and were copiously sown abroad through all nature, waiting there to be successively taken up and

hte von den Seelen

uctive Sciences, vol. I

eneratione Anima Humana ex Pri

eing is force, and their indestructible predicates are perception, desire, tendency to develop. While they lie dormant, their potential capacities all inwrapped, they constitute what we entitle matter. When, by the rising stir of their inherent longing, they leave their passive state and reach a condition of obscure consciousness, they become animals. Finally, they so far unwind their bonds and evolve their facultative potencies as to attain the rank of rational minds in the grade of humanity. Generation is merely the method by which the aspiring monad lays the organic basis for the grouped building of its body. Man is a living union of monads, one regent monad presiding over the whole organization. That king monad which has attained to full apperception, the free exercise of perfect consciousness, is the immortal human soul. 9 Any labored attempt t

n the cause of them. Those occupying this position, when asked what is the origin of souls, do not pretend to unveil the final secret, but simply say, everywhere in the world of life, from bottom to top, there is an organic growth in accordance with conditions. This is what

tz, Mona

e Untersuchungen tiber den Ursprung de

e an exposition of the fixed conditions and sequences of this production. Here they humbly stop, acknowledging that the causal root of power, which produces all these consequences, is an inexplicable myst

ganized forms produced by a variously named but unknown Power. They spring in regular methods, in determinate shapes, exist on successive stages of rank, with more or less striking demarcations of endowment, and finally fall bac

feels a st

hin it that rea

blindly abov

oul in grass

ly, a more special fact is, that when we have overleaped the mystery of a commencement, every being yields seed according to its kind, wherefrom, when properly conditioned, its species is perpetuated. How much, now, does this second fact imply? It is by adding to the observed phenomena an indefensible hypothesis that the error of traduction is obtained. We observe that human beings are begotten by a deposit of germs through the generative process. T

s that this primal nucleus is given, in the human species, by the union of the contents of a sperm cell with those of a

in and Propagation o

Life on the Globe, part

s the obvious conclusion, against which there is nothing to militate. That the soul of the child comes in some way from the soul of the parent, or is stamped by it, is also implied by the normal rese

inks from souls n

sse the sunne be

drops of light,

l it die his ha

h that consummate plant whose blossom is man's mind. This representation is not materialism; for spirit belongs to a different sphere and is the subject of different predicates from matter, though equally under a constitution of laws. Nor does this view pretend to explain what is inherently transcendent: it leaves the creation of the soul within as wide a depth and margin of mystery as ever. Neither is this mode of exposing the problem atheistic. It refers the forms of life, all growths, all so

eam'd from the sam

n dawn'd upon t

ivolity of skepticism and the garish light of science abroad in this modern time, there are still stricken and yearning depths of wonder and sorrow enough, profound and awful shadows of night and fear enough, to make us recognise, in the golden joys that visit us rarely, in the illimitable visions that emanci

y its directions, deposits, and receptacles may be altered. No combination of physical processes can produce a previously non existent subject: it can only initiate the modification, development, assimilation, of realities already in being. Something cannot come out of nothing. The quickening formation of a man, therefore, implies the existence, first, of a material germ, the basis of the body; secondly, of a power to impart to that germ a dynamic impulse, in other words, to deposit in it a spirit atom, or monad of life force. Now, the fresh body is originally a detached product of the parent body, as an apple is the detached product of a tree. So the fresh soul is a transmitted force imparted b

metaphysical shears of that notion more than once the burning faith in eternal life has been snuffed out. Yet how obvious is its sophistry! A being beginning in time need not cease in time, if the Power which originated it intends and provides for its perpetuity. And that such is the Creative inten

ist.

ation of Force, Phi

Ursprang der menechli

centres of personality, should beware lest he lose the motive which propels man to begin here, by virtue and cu