The Destiny of the Soul Part 63

1 Harris, The Pre Adamite Earth.

2 Aga.s.siz says no higher creature than man is to be expected on earth, because the capacities of the earthly plan of organic creation are completed and exhausted with him. Introduction to Study of Natural History, p. 57.

of man? Approaching this problem on grounds of science and reason alone, there can be no hesitation as to the reply. There are but two considerations really bearing upon the point and throwing light upon it; and they both force us to the same conclusion.

First, it is a fact admitting no denial that death was the predetermined natural fate of the successive generations of the races that preceded man. Now, what conceivable reason is there for supposing that man, constructed from the same elements, living under the same organic laws, was exempt from the same doom? There is not in the whole realm of science a single hint to that effect.

Secondly, the reproductive element an essential feature in the human const.i.tution, leading our kind to multiply and replenish the earth is a demonstration that the office of death entered into G.o.d's original plan of the world. For otherwise the earth at this moment could not hold a t.i.the of the inhabitants that would be demanding room. When G.o.d had permitted this world to roll in s.p.a.ce for awful ages, a lifeless globe of gas, fire, water, earth, and then let it be occupied for incommensurable epochs more by snails, vermin, and iguanodons, would he wind up the whole scene and destroy it when the race of man, crowning glory of all, had only flourished for a petty two thousand years? It is not credible. And yet it must have been so unless it was decreed that the successive generations should pa.s.s away and thus leave s.p.a.ce for, the new comers. We conclude, then, that it is the will of G.o.d and was in the beginning that the human race shall possess the earth through all the unknown periods of the future, the parents continually pa.s.sing off the stage in death as the children rise upon it to maturity. We cannot discern any authority in those old traditions which foretell the impending destruction of the world. On what grounds are we to believe them? The great system of things is a stable harmony. There is no wear or tear in the perfect machinery of the creation, rolling noiseless in its blue bearings of ether.

It seems, comparatively speaking, to have just begun. Its oscillations are self adjusted, and science prophesies for humanity an illimitable career on this earthly theatre. The swift melting of the elements and restoration of chaos is a mere heathen whim or a poetic figment. It is the bards who sing,

"The earth shall shortly die. Her grave is dug. I see the worlds, night clad, all gathering In long and dark procession. And the stars, Which stand as thick as glittering dewdrops on The fields of heaven, shall pa.s.s in blazing mist."

Such pictures are delusion winning the imagination, not truth commanding the reason. In spite of all the Ca.s.sandra screams of the priesthood, vaticinating universal ruin, the young old earth, fresh every spring, shall remain under G.o.d's preserving providence, and humanity's inexhaustible generations renewedly reign over its kingdoms, forever. Plotinus said, "If G.o.d repents having made the world, why does he defer its destruction? If he does not yet repent, he never will, as being now accustomed to it, and becoming through time more friendly to it."

3 Lucan says, "Our bones and the stars shall be mingled on one funeral pyre." Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra Misturus.

But to receive such a good piece of poetry as veritable prevision is surely a puerile error which a mature mind in the nineteenth century should be ashamed to commit.

The most recently broached theory of the end of the world is that developed from some remarkable speculations as to the composition and distribution of force. The view is briefly this. All force is derived from heat. All heat is derived from the sun.4 The mechanical value of a cubic mile of sunlight at the surface of the earth is one horse power for a third of a minute; at the sun it is fifteen thousand horse power for a minute. Now, it is calculated that enough heat is radiated from the sun to require for its production the annual consumption of the whole surface of the sun to the depth of from ten to twenty miles. Of course, ultimately the fuel will be all expended; then the forces of the system will expire, and the creation will die.5 This brilliant and sublime theorem a.s.sumes, first, that the heat of the sun arises from consumption of matter, which may not be true; secondly, that it is not a self replenis.h.i.+ng process, as it certainly may be. Some have even surmised that the zodiacal light is an illuminated tornado of stones showering into the sun to feed its tremendous conflagration. The whole scheme is a fine toy, but a very faint terror. Even if it be true, then we are to perish at last from lack of fire, and not, as commonly feared, from its abundance!

The belief of mankind that a soul or ghost survives the body has been so nearly universal as to appear like the spontaneous result of an instinct. We propose to trace the history of opinions concerning the physical destination of this disembodied spirit, its connection with localities, to give the historical topography of the future life.

The earliest conception of the abode of the dead was probably that of the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, namely, the idea born from the silence, depth, and gloom of the grave of a stupendous subterranean cavern full of the drowsy race of shades, the indiscriminate habitation of all who leave the land of the living.

Gradually the thought arose and won acceptance that the favorites of Deity, peerless heroes and sages, might be exempt from this dismal fate, and migrate at death to some delightful clime beyond some far sh.o.r.e, there, amidst unalloyed pleasures, to spend immortal days. This region was naturally located on the surface of the earth, where the cheerful sun could s.h.i.+ne and the fresh breezes blow, yet in some untrodden distance, where the gauntlet of fact had not smitten the sceptre of fable. The paltry portion of this earth familiar to the ancients was surrounded by an unexplored region, which their fancy, stimulated by the legends of the poets, peopled with mythological kingdoms, the rainbow bowers and cloudy synods of Olympus, from whose glittering peak the Thunderer threw his bolts over the south; the Golden Garden of the

3 Ennead ii. lib. ix.: Contra Gnosticos, cap. 4.

4 Helmholtz, Edinburgh Phil. Msg., series iv. vol. xi.: Interaction of Natural Forces.

5 Thomson, Ibid. Dec. 1854: Mechanical Energies of the Solar System.

Hesperides, whose dragons lay on guard in the remote west; the divine cities of Meru, whose encircling towers pierced the eastern sky; the Banquet Halls of Ethiopia, gleaming through the fiery desert; the fragrant Islands of Immortality, musical and luring in the central ocean; the happy land of the Hyperboreans, beyond the snowy summits of northern Caucasus:

"How pleasant were the wild beliefs That dwelt in legends old!

Alas! to our posterity Will no such tales be told. We know too much: scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves: Our only point of ignorance Is centred in ourselves."

There was a belief among the Persians that Kaf, a mountain two thousand miles high, formed a rim to the flat world and prevented travellers from ever falling off.6 The fact that the earth is a globe inhabited on all sides is a comparatively recent piece of knowledge. So late as in the eighth century Pope Zachary accused Virgilius, an Irish mathematician and monk, of heresy for believing in the existence of antipodes.7 St. Boniface wrote to the Pope against Virgilius; and Zachary ordered a council to be held to expel him from the Church, for "professing, against G.o.d and his own soul, so perverse and wicked a doctrine." To the ancients all beyond the region they had traversed was an unknown land, clothed in darkness, crowded with mystery and allurement.

Across the weltering wastes of brine, in a halcyon sea, the Hindu placed the White Isle, the dwelling of translated and immortalized men.8 Under the attraction of a mystic curiosity, well might the old, wearied Ulysses say,

"Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

Decius Brutus and his army, as Florus relates, reaching the coast of Portugal, where, for the first time, they saw the sun setting in the blood tinged ocean, turned back their standards with horror as they beheld "the huge corpse of ruddy gold let down into the deep." The Phoenician traders brought intelligence to Greece of a people, the Cimmerians, who dwelt on the borders of Hades in the umbered realms of perpetual night. To the dying Roman, on the farthest verge of the known horizon hovered a vision of Elysian Fields. And the American

6 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 36, note.

7 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, vol. i. book iv. ch. i. sect.

7.

8 Wilford, Essays on the Sacred Isles, In Asiatic Researches, vols. viii. xi.

Indian, sinking in battle or the chase, caught glimpses of happier Hunting Grounds, whose woods trooped with game, and where the arrows of the braves never missed, and there was no winter. There was a pretty myth received among some of the ancient Britons, locating their paradise in a spot surrounded by tempests, far in the Western Ocean, and named Flath Innis, or n.o.ble Island.9 The following legend is ill.u.s.trative. An old man sat thoughtful on a rock beside the sea. A cloud, under whose squally skirts the waters foamed, rushed down; and from its dark womb issued a boat, with white sails bent to the wind, and hung round with moving oars. Dest.i.tute of mariners, itself seemed to live and move. A voice said, "Arise, behold the boat of heroes: embark, and see the Green Isle of those who have pa.s.sed away!" Seven days and seven nights he voyaged, when a thousand tongues called out, "The Isle!

the Isle!" The black billows opened before him, and the calm land of the departed rushed in light on his eyes. We are reminded by this of what Procopius says concerning the conveyal of the soul of the barbarian to his paradise. At midnight there is a knocking at the door, and indistinct voices call him to come. Mysteriously impelled, he goes to the sea coast, and there finds a frail, empty wherry awaiting him. He embarks, and a spirit crew row him to his destination.10

"He finds with ghosts His boat deep freighted, sinking to the edge Of the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees No substance; but, arrived where once again His skiff floats free, hears friends to friends Give lamentable welcome. The unseen Sh.o.r.e faint resounds, and all the mystic air Breathes forth the names of parent, brother, wife."

During that period of poetic credulity while the face of the earth remained to a great extent concealed from knowledge, wherever the Hebrew Scriptures were known went the cherished traditions of the Garden of Eden from which our first parents were driven for their sin. Speculation naturally strove to settle the locality of this lost paradise. Sometimes it was situated in the mysterious bosom of India; sometimes in the flowery vales of Georgia, where roses and spices perfumed the gales; sometimes in the guarded recesses of Mesopotamia. Now it was the Grand Oasis in the Arabian desert, flas.h.i.+ng on the wilted pilgrim, over the blasted and blazing wastes, with the verdure of palms, the play of waters, the smell and flavor of perennial fruits. Again it was at the equator, where the torrid zone stretched around it as a fiery sword waving every way so that no mortal could enter. In the "Imago Mundi," a Latin treatise on cosmography written early in the twelfth century, we read, "Paradise is the extreme eastern part of Asia, and is made inaccessible by a wall of fire surrounding it and rising unto heaven." At a later time the Canaries were thought to be the ancient Elysium, and were accordingly named the Fortunate Isles.

Indeed, among the motives that animated

9 Macpherson, Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 180-186.

10 Procopius, Gothica, lib. iv.

Columbus on his adventurous voyage no inferior place must be a.s.signed to the hope of finding the primeval seat of Paradise.11 The curious traveller, exploring these visionary spots one by one, found them lying in the light of common day no nearer heaven than his own natal home; and at last all faith in them died out when the whole surface of the globe had been surveyed, no nook left wherein romance and superst.i.tion might any longer play at hide and seek.

Continuing our search after the local abode of the departed, we now leave the surface of the earth and descend beneath it. The first haunted region we reach is the realm of the Fairies, which, as every one acquainted with the magic lore of old Germany or England knows, was situated just under the external ground, and was clothed with every charm poets could imagine or the heart dream. There was supposed to be an entrance to this enchanted domain at the Peak Cavern in Derbys.h.i.+re, and at several other places. Sir Walter Scott has collected some of the best legends ill.u.s.trative of this belief in his "History of Demonology." Sir Gawaine, a famous knight of the Round Table, was once admitted to dine, above ground, in the edge of the forest, with the King of the Fairies:

"The banquet o'er, the royal Fay, intent To do all honor to King Arthur's knight, Smote with his rod the bank on which they leant, And Fairy land flash'd glorious on the sight; Flash'd, through a silvery, soft, translucent mist, The opal shafts and domes of amethyst; Flash'd founts in sh.e.l.ls of pearl, which crystal walls And phosphor lights of myriad hues redouble.

There, in the blissful subterranean halls, When morning wakes the world of human trouble Glide the gay race; each sound our discord knows, Faint heard above, but lulls them to repose."

To this empire of moonlit swards and elfin dances, of jewelled banks, lapsing streams, and enchanting visions, it was thought a few favored mortals might now and then find their way. But this was never an earnest general faith. It was a poetic superst.i.tion that hovered over fanciful brains, a legendary dream that pleased credulous hearts; and, with the other romance of the early world, it has vanished quite away.

The popular belief of Jews, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Germans, and afterwards of Christians, was that there was an immense world of the dead deep beneath the earth, subdivided into several subordinate regions. The Greenlanders believed in a separated heaven and h.e.l.l, both located far below the Polar Ocean. According to the old cla.s.sic descriptions of the under world, what a scene of colossal gloom it is! Its atmosphere murmurs with a breath of plaintive sighs. Its population, impalpable ghosts timidly flitting at every motion,

11 Irving, Life of Columbus: Appendix on the Situation of the Terrestrial Paradise. By far the most valuable book ever published on this subject is that of Schulthess, Das Paradies, das irdische und uberirdische historische, mythische und mystische, nebst einer kritischen Revision der allgemelnen biblischen Geographie.

crowd the sombre landscapes in numbers surpa.s.sing imagination.

There Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting doleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy pa.s.sengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony throne and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his side sits his stolen and shrinking bride, Proserpine, her glimmering brows encircled with a wreath of poppies. Above the subterranean monarch's head a sable rainbow spans the infernal firmament; and when, with lifted hand, he announces his decrees, the applause given by the twilight populace of Hades is a rustle of sighs, a vapor of tears, and a shudder of submission.

The belief in this dolorous kingdom was early modified by the reception of two other adjacent realms, one of reward, one of torture; even as Goethe says, in allusion to the current Christian doctrine, "h.e.l.l was originally but one apartment: limbo and purgatory were afterwards added as wings." Pa.s.sing through Hades, and turning in one direction, the spirit traveller would arrive at Elysium or Abraham's bosom:

"To paradise the gloomy pa.s.sage winds Through regions drear and dismal, and through pain, Emerging soon in beatific blaze Of light."

There the blessed ones found respite and peaceful joys in flowery fields, pure breezes, social fellows.h.i.+p, and the similitudes of their earthly pursuits. In this placid clime, lighted by its own constellations, favored souls roamed or reposed in a sort of ineffectual happiness. According to the pagans, here were such heroes as Achilles, such sages as Socrates, to remain forever, or until the end of the world. And here, according to the Christians, the departed patriarchs and saints were tarrying expectant of Christ's arrival to ransom them. Dante thus describes that great event:

"Then he, who well my covert meaning knew, Answer'd, Herein I had not long been bound, When an All puissant One I saw march through, With victory's radiant sign triumphal crown'd.

He led from us our Father Adam's shade, Abel and Noah, whom G.o.d loved the most, Lawgiving Moses, him who best obey'd, Abraam the patriarch, royal David's ghost; Israel, his father, and his sons, and her Whom Israel served for, faithfully and long, Rachel, with more, to bliss did He transfer: No souls were saved before this chosen throng." 12

At the opposite extremity of Hades was supposed to be an opening that led down into Tartarus, "a place made underneath all things, so low and horrible that h.e.l.l is its heaven." Here the old earth giants, the looming t.i.tans, lay, bound, transfixed with thunderbolts, their

12 Parsons's trans. Dell' Inferno, canto iv. ii. 55-63.

mountainous shapes half buried in rocks, encrusting lava, and ashes. Rivers of fire seam the darkness, whose borders are braided with sentinel furies. On every hand the worst criminals, perjurers, blasphemers, ingrates, groan beneath the pitiless punishments inflicted on them without escape. Any realization of the terrific scenery of this whole realm would curdle the blood.13 There were fabled entrances to the dread under world at Acherusia, in Bithynia, at Avernus, in Campania, where Ulysses evoked the dead and traversed the grisly abodes, through the Sibyl's cave at c.u.ma, at Hermione, in Argolis, where the people thought the pa.s.sage below so near and easy that they neglected to give the dying an obolus to pay ferriage to Charon, at Tanarus, the southern most point of Peloponnesus, where Herakles went down and dragged the three headed dog up into day, at the cave of Trophonius, in Lebadea, and at several other places.

Similar conceptions have been embodied in the ecclesiastical doctrine which has generally prevailed in Christendom. Locating the scene in the hollow of the earth, thus has it been described by Milton,