nally a material sense, is proof that the belief in a future life "rests on material notions" and "sensible impressions," all language, even in its most scientific and spiritual form, gives evidence of materialistic ideas. The Hebrew, the Greek Tveûμa, the Latin animus, anima (from a and the Sanscrit an) and spiritus (from the Sanscrit spæ), ex vi etymi, denote simply breath, wind. Even the Greek voûș, the pure intellect (from véw to move and the Sanscrit ni or nai with the same meaning), "rested," in this respect, "on a material notion," and "was fashioned out of sensible impressions." These words, denoting the most subtle, powerful, and widely-diffused of material things, were used also to signify mind, life, immaterial energy. It is commonly said that they first bore a material sense; but there is no proof of it; nor can it, of course, be refuted. It is possible that men began to think and speak of mind as soon as they did of matter. The first use of in written discourse happens to be in its highest and most purely spiritual sense, to denote the Spirit of God; and it just afterwards occurs denoting that Spirit' in his influence on the mind of man. And Yuxý first occurs signifying the "mighty souls "2 which "the wrath of Achilles sent to the invisible world." And whatever Dr. V. may think of them, we fully believe and hope to show, that these "mighty souls" were souls, and not the "airy," "unconscious," "immaterial," and yet quite corporeal, "beings," which "are dreamed of in his philosophy." Whether, however, the material and spiritual senses of these words (and among them ux) were transitions in their history and use, or merely different aspects or applications, in which they were always used, vyý undoubtedly bears the three senses of breath, life, soul. But when Dr. Voelcker says that the meaning of breath "is preserved in those passages where it is said of the yvyn that it has escaped the pros odóvτæv," he contents himself with asserting what it was necessary for him to prove- and what the Homeric usage makes it impossible to prove. 1 Gen. 1, 2. coll. 6, 3. 2 II 1,3 “The word εἴδωλον,” says Dr. V., " conducts us to the true explanation of ψυχή. . . . Εἴδωλον and ψυχή are synonymous, or rather εἴδωλον is the explanation of ψυχή.” An extraordinary assertion truly! — the fallacy of which is exposed by a single passage of Homer. Odysseus, deeply touched on learning from his mother, in Hades, that sorrow for him had caused her death, "longed earnestly to embrace the soul of his dead mother." 66 Thrice," he says, "I rushed forward, for my heart prompted me to embrace, but thrice she escaped from my arms, like to a shadow or a dream. Keener anguish then arose in my heart, and I thus addressed her : Μῆτερ ἐμὴ, τί νύ μ' οὐ μίμνεις ἑλέειν μεμαῶτα, Finding that the uxn of his mother yielded nothing substantial to his embrace, he exclaims: “ Is this some εἴδωλον, which awful Persephone has sent to me only to aggravate my sorrow?" His mother replies: "My unhappy son! Persephone, daughter of Zeus, by no means thus deludes thee (οὔτι σε ἀπαφίσκει) ; but this is the state of mortals af ter death. They have no longer flesh and bones." This explains why he could not embrace her. Still she assures him it was the reasoning and loving soul of his mother which held all this communion with him, and not a mere φαντασία σώμα an εἴδωλον.”. Το have sent an εἴδωλον instead of a ψυχή, Antikleia admits would have been to dupe and delude τος 2 Od. 11, 209 seq. * Nitzsch, citing Mich. Apost. Plov. III. 82, thus defines: ἔστι δὲ εἴδωλον, σκιῶδες ὁμοίωμα ή φαντασία σώματος ἀεροειδής τε σκία. Od. 11, 212-214. him; but she calms and comforts him by telling him that his inability to embrace her arose from the absence of flesh and bones, and that it was a real vx, and not at all (OUT) an edwλov, which was before him. And yet Dr. Voelcker, echoed by Nitzsch and Nägelsbach, pronounce edwλov and vxý synonymous! The very thing which Homer tells us, if substituted for a yuxý would have been a sham, a trick, and a delusion, Dr. Voelcker triumphantly affirms, “conducts us to the right explanation;" a sort of "explanation" which, if applied to the only other instance in which amaḍioкw is used by Homer, would lead us to the extraordinary conclusion that a disguised adulterer is a "synonyme" for a true husband; since Homer there expresses the relation between these two characters by the same word, which here denotes that of an edwλov to a yux. And yet Dr. V. is so well pleased with this "explanation," that he is disposed to appropriate the whole merit of the discovery to himself; "elowλov," he says," a word which, with reference to this εἴδωλον,” point, has hitherto been entirely neglected, and yet makes everything clear." Eiswλov, then, was used simply in the way of comparison, to denote the physically unsubstantial nature of the yuxai. And so of the other similes, ήΰτ ὄνειρος, ὡς σκιά, ήΰτε καπνός, σkin Elkeλos, by which the poet simply presents the departed soul as destitute of material substance and physical force, but which these writers produce as evidence that they were "destitute of mental faculties," as they do also the epithets ἀκήριοι, ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα, ἀφραδέες νεκροί, which Dr. V. cites as proof of "the airy nature of these beings," but which Homer plainly uses as negations of physical qualities, indicating that the dead were destitute of bodily ŵp, μévos, and Opéves (these terms being used of the living man, both in a physical and mental sense). They are so interpreted by Eustathius. To understand them as these writers have done, is a plain violation of the simplest laws of tropical lan In the coll. form àrapáw, Od. 23, 216 coll. 217. Crusius defines thus: àraploкw, betrügen, täuschen, hintergehen. 2 On Od. 11. 212, 13. guage, by which Shakspeare must stand convicted of asserting that the human soul was nothing but air, since he makes Marcellus pronounce the ghost of Hamlet 66 as the air invulnerable." By such criticism, metaphors become strict definitions. In the sacred writers, "a shadow," "a flower," "a vain show," instead of being illustrations of the transitoriness of our earthly life in certain aspects, must be regarded as synonymes, "right explanations," "making everything clear," as to the nature and substance of man; and Isaiah and Peter may be cited as "confirmation strong," that the sole component and material of humanity is "grass." The distinction between Teiresias and the other dead (which they also cite as an argument), certainly presents a graver difficulty. Kirke sends Odysseus and his companions to Hades, Ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίας, Μάντιος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσιν· Strabo, Lucian (cited by Dr. Samuel Clarke), and Eustathius 2 considered the peculiarity of Teiresias to consist in the gift of prophecy. But this does not seem fully to satisfy the language of the poet. The expression opéves éμπedoɩ would seem to denote the retention of some physical vitality and substance; for ppéves, at once a bodily organ and mental faculties, is nowhere else predicated of the dead. But vóOV TEπVÚoda forbids this restriction. Interpreted by itself, the passage would certainly convey the idea that Teiresias alone reretained his intelligence in the other world. But when we find the other souls talking quite as coherently, and some of them quite as wisely as Teiresias, we perceive that the poet must have meant something else than mere intelligence, or else that he here inadvertently used words the strict and separate construction of which would make this 1 Od. 10. 492 seq. 2 On Od. 10. 495. passage a solitary exception to his general system. We do not think it necessary to resort to the easy remedy of supposing an interpolation or corruption, though it is far from improbable. This is one of the passages which Plato says he could have wished to blot from the Homeric poetry,1 a plain proof that he considered it not in the spirit of that poetry. "The usage handed down in the language of explaining eidwλov by vepéλn would, of itself, be sufficient to attest that these forms were composed of air, even if expressions in Homer himself did not sufficiently demonstrate the point." Dr. Voelcker is put to a desperate shift for an argument. Homer compares a disembodied soul to an εἴδωλον. ΕἴδωXov was, some centuries after, " explained by veþéλŋ” in the Helen of Euripides and the Pythia of Pindar. This, Dr. V. denominates "a usage," "a usage handed down in the language;" and he says it would, of itself, be sufficient to attest that these forms " (i. e. the Homeric souls) "were composed of air, even if expressions in Homer did not sufficiently demonstrate the point!" Whither would such criticism lead us? Not only are Homer's own similes to be received as synonymes, but the gravest theories about him are to be "attested" by the metaphors of poets who lived five hundred years after him?2 With much better color of reason might Dr. Voelcker have cited the ridiculous philosophemes which Antisthenes and Chrysippus spun out of his necrology. "When Achilles desired to embrace the form of Patroclus, which had appeared to him out of the lower world, it sunk into the earth like smoke." Thus Dr. Voelcker has translated Ωχετο· Rep 111. beg. · κατὰ χθονός ήΰτε καπνὸς 2 And observe how Dr. V. annotates on his own text: "In these passages of Euripides indeed, efdwλov no longer denotes an airy image; but that it can nevertheless be called vepéλŋ shews of what kind we are to suppose the Homeric eidola to he. since the expression vepéλŋ was justified by the usage of the language!" p. 49 (E. T.) note. Thus his note demolishes “the airy fabric" of his own "vision" and "leaves not a rack behind." |