"The body to the tomb and the spirit to the womb....
"This doctrine is none other than what G.o.d hath taught openly from the very beginning....
"For truly the soul of a man goeth not to the body of a beast, as some say....
"But the soul of the lower beast goeth to the body of the higher, and the soul of the higher beast to the body of the savage, and the soul of the savage to the man....
"And so a man shall be immortal in one body and one garment that neither can fade nor decay.
"Ye who now lament to go out of this body, wept also when ye were born into it...."[221]
"The person of man is only a mask which the soul putteth on for a season; it weareth its proper time and then is cast off, and another is worn in its stead....
"I tell you, of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity shall be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and names."[222]
In _Asiatic Researches_, Colebrooke states that the present Mohammedan sect of the _Bohrahs_ believes in metempsychosis, as do the Hindus, and, like the latter, abstains from flesh, for the same reason.
Thus we find the doctrine of Reincarnation at the heart of all the great religions of antiquity. The reason it has remained in a germinal state in recent religions--Christianity and Islamism--is that in the latter Mohammed did not attain to the degree of a Hierophant, and in all likelihood the race to which he brought light did not greatly need to become acquainted with the law relating to the return to earth life; whereas in the former the real teachings of the Christ were lost when the Gnostics were exterminated, and Eusebius and Irenaeus, the founders of exoteric Christianity, unable to grasp the _spirit_, imposed the _letter_ throughout the religion.
THE DOCTRINE OF REBIRTH IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
In antiquity, science and philosophy were scarcely anything else than parts of religion[223]; the most eminent scientists and the greatest philosophers alike were all supporters of the established form of religion, whenever they did not happen to be its priests, for the temples were the common cradle of science and philosophy. No wonder, then, that we find these three great aspects of Truth always hand in hand, never opposed to or in conflict with one another through the whole of antiquity. Science was for the body, philosophy for the intellect, and religion for that divine spark which is destined to flash forth and finally become a "G.o.d" in the bosom of the World Soul.
Every intelligent man knew that on this tripod lay the life of the individual, the life of society, and the life of the world. Divorce between these took place only at a later date, when the divine Teachers had disappeared, and mutilated traditions handed down to the nations nothing but disfigured and incomplete teachings buried beneath the ruins of temples that had been crumbling away ever since spiritual Life had left them.
Then followed the era of separation; science and philosophy became debased and went their own ways, whilst a degenerate religion reflected nothing higher than the narrow mentality of fallen ministers. As this degradation continued, there sprang into being religious wars, monstrosities that were unknown in those times when Divinity shed illumination and guidance on the nations by means of those mighty souls, the Adept-Kings: G.o.ds, demi-G.o.ds, and heroes.
Nevertheless, Truth never remained without her guardians, and when apostleship had been destroyed by persecutions the sacred treasure which was to be handed down from age to age was secretly entrusted by the sages to faithful disciples. Thus did Esoterism pa.s.s through fire and bloodshed, and one of its greatest teachings, the doctrine of Palingenesis, has left a stream of light in its wake. Now we will give a rapid sketch of it in modern times, examining the philosophical teachings of the greatest of recent thinkers. We will borrow mainly from Walker"s work on this subject, quoting only the writers most deserving of mention, and making only short extracts, for all that is needed is to plant a few sign-posts to guide the student along the path.
In the 128th verse of _Lalla Rookh_, Thomas Moore speaks of rebirths:
"Stranger, though new the frame Thy soul inhabits now, I"ve traced its flame For many an age, in every chance and change Of that Existence, through whose varied range,-- As through a torch-race, where, from hand to hand The flying youths transmit their shining brand,-- From frame to frame the unextinguished soul Rapidly pa.s.ses, till it reach the goal!"
Paracelsus, like every Initiate, was acquainted with it, and Jacob Bohme, the "nursling of the Nirmanakayas,"[224] knew that it was a law of Nature.
Giordano Bruno--also a great Soul--quotes from Ovid"s _Metamorphoses_, Book 15, Line 156, &c., as follows:
"O mortals! chilled by dreams of icy death, Whom air-blown bubbles of a poet"s breath, Darkness and Styx in error"s gulph have hurl"d, With fabled terrors of a fabled world; Think not, whene"er material forms expire, Consumed by wasting age or funeral fire, Aught else can die: souls, spurning death"s decay, Freed from their old, new tenements of clay Forthwith a.s.sume, and wake to life again.
... All is change, Nought perishes" ...
_Orger"s translation_[225]
Campanella, the Dominican monk, was sent into exile on account of his belief in the successive returns of the soul to earth.
The Younger Helmont, in his turn, was attacked by the inquisition for leaching this doctrine in his _De Revolutione Animarum_, in which he brings forward, in two hundred problems, all the arguments; that make reincarnation necessary.
Cudworth and Dr. Henry More, the Platonists of Cambridge, were faithful believers in Palingenesis; whilst Joseph Glanvill, in _Lux Orientalis_, finds that there are "Seven Pillars" on which Pre-existence rests.
Dr. Edward Beecher, in _The Conflict of Ages_ and _The Concord of Ages_, as well as Julius Muller, the well-known German theologian, in _The Christian Doctrine of Sin_, warmly uphold it.
Sch.e.l.ling acknowledges it in his _Dissertation on Metempsychosis_.
Leibnitz, in his _Monadology_, and more especially his _Theodicy_, witnessed to his belief in this doctrine. Had he dared to speak out his thoughts openly, he would more effectively have advocated his "Optimism," by the teachings of evolution and rebirths, than by all the other arguments he advanced.
Chevalier Ramsey, in _The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion_, writes:
"The holy oracles always represent Paradise as our native country, and our present life as an exile. How can we be said to have been banished from a place in which we never were? This argument alone would suffice to convince us of pre-existence, if the prejudice of infancy inspired by the schoolmen had not accustomed us to look upon these expressions as metaphorical, and to believe, contrary to Scripture and reason, that we were exiled from a happy state, only for the fault and personal disobedience of our first parents....
"Our Saviour seems to approve the doctrine of pre-existence in his answer to the disciples, when they interrogate him thus about the man born blind,[226] "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" It is clear that this question would have been ridiculous and impertinent if the disciples had not believed that the man born blind had sinned before his corporal birth, and consequently that he had existed in another state long ere he was born on earth.
Our Saviour"s answer is remarkable, "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of G.o.d might be manifested in him."
Jesus Christ could not mean that neither this man nor his parents had ever committed any sin, for this can be said of no mortal; but the meaning is that it was neither for the sins committed by this man in a state of pre-existence, nor for those of his parents, that he was born blind; but that he was deprived of sight from his birth, by a particular dispensation of Providence, in order to manifest, one day, the power of G.o.d in our Saviour. Our Lord, therefore, far from blaming and redressing this error in his disciples, as he did those concerning his temporal kingdom, answers in a way that seems to suppose with them, and confirm them in the doctrine of pre-existence. If he had looked upon this opinion as a capital error, would it have been consonant or compatible with his eternal wisdom to have pa.s.sed it over so lightly and thus tacitly authorised it by such silence? On the contrary, does not his silence manifestly indicate that he looked upon this doctrine, which was a received maxim of the Jewish Church, as the true explanation of original sin?
"Since G.o.d says that he loved Jacob and detested Esau ere they were born, and before they had done good or evil in this mortal life, since G.o.d"s love and hatred depend upon the moral dispositions of the creature, ... it follows clearly that if G.o.d hated Esau, type of the reprobate, and loved Jacob, type of the elect, before their natural birth, they must have pre-existed in another state.
"If it be said that all these texts are obscure, that pre-existence is largely drawn from them by induction, and that this belief is not revealed in Scripture by express words, I answer that the doctrines of the immortality of the soul are nowhere revealed, least of all in the oracles of the _Old_ and _New Testament_. We may say the same of pre-existence. This doctrine is nowhere expressly revealed as an article of faith, but it is evidently implied in the _Wisdom of Solomon_, by the author of _Ecclesiasticus_, by our Saviour"s silence, by St. Paul"s comparisons, and by the sacred doctrine of original sin, which becomes not only inexplicable, but absurd, repugnant, and impossible, if that of pre-existence be not true.... The Fifth General Council held at Constantinople p.r.o.nounces anathema against all those who maintain the fabulous doctrine of pre-existence in the Origenian sense. It was not then the simple doctrine of pre-existence that was condemned by the council, but the fict.i.tious mixtures and erroneous disguises by which this ancient tradition had been adulterated by the Origenites."
Soame Jenyns writes:
"That mankind had existed in some state previous to the present was the opinion of the wisest sages of the most remote antiquity. It was held by the Gymnosophists of Egypt, the Brahmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the greatest philosophers of Greece and Rome; it was likewise adopted by the _Fathers of the Christian Church, and frequently enforced by her early writers_; why it has been so little noticed, so much overlooked rather than rejected, by the divines and metaphysicians of latter ages, I am at a loss to account for, as it is undoubtedly confirmed by reason, by all the appearances of nature and the doctrines of revelation.
"In the first place, then, it is confirmed by reason, which teaches us that it is impossible that the conjunction of a male and female can create an immortal soul; they may prepare a material habitation for it; but there cannot be an immortal, pre-existent inhabitant ready to take possession. Reason a.s.sures us that an immortal soul, which will exist eternally after the dissolution of the body, must have eternally existed before the formation of it; _for whatever has no end can never have had any beginning_....
"Reason likewise tells us that an omnipotent and benevolent Creator would never have formed such a world as this, and filled it with such inhabitants if the present was the only, or even the first, state of their existence; for this state which, if unconnected with the past and the future, would seem calculated for no purpose intelligible to our understanding, neither of good or evil, of happiness or misery, of virtue or vice, of reward or punishment; but a confused jumble of them all together, proceeding from no visible cause and tending to no end....
"Pre-existence, although perhaps it is nowhere in the _New Testament_ explicitly enforced, yet throughout the whole tenour of these writings is everywhere implied; in them, mankind is constantly represented as coming into the world under a load of guilt; as condemned criminals, the children of wrath and objects of divine indignation; placed in it for a time by the mercies of G.o.d to give them an opportunity of expiating this guilt by sufferings, and regaining, by a pious and virtuous conduct, their lost state of happiness and innocence....
"Now if by all this a pre-existent state is not constantly supposed, that is, that mankind has existed in some state previous to the present, in which this guilt was incurred, and this depravity contracted, there can be no meaning at all or such a meaning as contradicts every principle of common sense, that guilt can be contracted without acting, or that we can act without existing...."
The following is a quotation from Hume, the great positivist philosopher:
"Reasoning from the common course of nature, what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth, and if the former existence in noway concerned us, neither will the latter.... Metempsychosis is, therefore, the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to." (_The Immortality of the Soul_.)
Young, in his _Night Thoughts_ (Night the Sixth), has the following lines:
"Look nature through, "tis revolution all; All change, no death. Day follows night; and night The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise; Earth takes th" example ...
... All, to reflourish, fades; As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend.
Emblems of man, who pa.s.ses, not expires."
"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in Nature is resurrection," said Voltaire.
Delormel, Descartes, and Lavater were struck with the tremendous importance of the doctrine of Palingenesis.
_The Philosophy of the Universe_, of Dupont de Nemours, is full of the idea of successive lives, as a necessary corollary of the law of progress; whilst Fontenelle strongly advocates it in his _Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes_.
It is needless to state that these ideas formed part of the esoteric teachings of Martinez Pasqualis, Claude Saint-Martin, and their followers.
Saint-Martin lived in times that were too troubled for him to speak freely. In his works, however, not a few pa.s.sages are found in which there can be no doubt that reincarnation is hinted at, to anyone able to read between the lines. (_Tableau nat._, vol. I, p. 136; _L"homme de Desir_, p. 312.)