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body, nor the grave, nor the burial can the fathers, and fancy, aided by memory, break their simple faith. Wordsworth's peoples the realm of the dead with the "Little Maid " is a type of the child-mind shades of renowned ancestors, whose sothe world over, and its belief translated ciety and fellowship become before long into the language of man becomes a sublime "Ode to Immortality." To the instincts of a living man, who has not yet learned to reason either from the facts of experience or the data of consciousness, death cannot suggest annihilation, because annihilation is a thought too abstract and repugnant to these instincts to be either intelligible or credible. In such a man faith is stronger than sight; he can conceive and understand life, but not its utter negation. If he. thinks of the dead, he thinks of them as living- the very attempt to represent them in thought is an attempt to represent living, not dead men.

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objects of intense desire to the living. Then, alongside the admiration rendered to the fathers, ethical ideas are evolved, and the conditions on which a man is granted or denied admittance to the circle of ancestral heroes, contain the germinal notion of a state of reward and retribution. Then, thought, gradually accustomed to conceive the dead as living, to see in nature life emerge uninjured from death, works out an abstract doctrine, a theory of form and life, body and soul, which, while committing the one to death and dissolution, assigns the other to independent and continued life. And these theories become in turn supports of the very belief which evoked them. The hope of a future life turns back for encouragement to the very metaphysic itself had created. And as the metaphysic is often fanciful and absurd, the evidence is as often weaker than the belief. The one is the creation of crude and premature speculation, the other the utterance of a great human instinct.

While the process of evolution is conditioned by the general development of the national mind, the specific form under which immortality is conceived is, on the other hand, conditioned by the idea of God. The idea formed of the divine nature determines that formed of the human. The two ideas develope side by side, constitute, indeed, the two poles or sides of the same thought. While the idea of God remains so inchoate as to ad

But, while the instincts of primitive mind refuse to conceive the dead as nonexistent, a double incapacity prescribes the limits and form of the only conception possible to it, the incapacity to conceive other than embodied being, and the incapacity to comprehend unlimited duration. In other words, the undeveloped mind cannot conceive the abstract notion of spirit and the abstract notion of immortality, or endless duration of being. Hence the earliest notions of the future represent it as a shadowy copy of the present; and its duration is measured by memory, is not made measureless by hope -ie., the conception attaches itself to the recollection of the dead rather than to the expectations of the living. But notwithstanding these limitations, the belief is a real belief in immortality, so far as it is possible to a child-mind. The seed is here, as it ought to be; the natural and neces-mit the limitations and multiplicities of sary growth of mind will transform the Polytheism, it does not and can not involve seed into both flower and fruit. as a necessity either of reason or faith, But, while the belief in the future life any specific form of the belief in immorsprings out of what we must call, for want tality. of a better term, an instinct, its evolution, But as the religion generates a thealike as to the time occupied and theology, as thought comes to conceive God order of thought observed, depends on the as the One related to the Many, as the development of the mental faculties, as in their turn at once conditioning and conditioned by the history and situation of the people. In general, since the belief attaches itself to the past rather than to the future, it gathers round the persons of

single source of the manifold creation, man is led at the same time and by the same principles to conceive and formulate his faith in his own immortal existence. This does not happen all at once, but is the result of slow and not always con

iii. THE HINDU BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. The limits of the discussion exclude any attempt, even were such possible, to discover by the analysis of Indo-European words or legends, whether there are any traces of the belief before the Aryan family divided into its several Asiatic and European branches.

scious movements of mind. Inside of The subject is too extensive to be dealt every Polytheism still in the physical with in a single paper, and so leaving to stage, principles, the deposits of single another article the history of Greek intellects or general tendencies, gather, thought, we shall here confine ourselves to receive, either consciously, or uncon- Indian. sciously, forms inimical to it, and either abolish the ancient religion or erect by its side a distinct and supplementary worship, say under the form of mysteries, or, while sparing it as a mode of worship, substitute for the mythical creations, which were its original constituents, a body of reflective or speculative doctrines. If the prelusive thought had been tending to grasp a single universal and indestructible principle of the life manifested in nature and man, a Pantheistic theory as to God, a theory of transmigration as to man, will emerge. But if its tendency had been to seek a Supreme Will and Authority, then the result will be a personal God, and the personal continuance of man. The first will thus have a metaphysical, but the second a moral, basis. Brahmanism may stand as an example of the one, Zoroastrism of the other.

Our present enquiry has to do only with the Hindus and Greeks, and so must start, as regards both, with their earliest extant literature.

1. THE HYMNS OF THE RIG-VEDA. In the earlier books of this Veda the indications of the belief are few, and, in some respects, indefinite. This, indeed, was to be expected. The religion there revealed exists still in great part under the forms of the old nature-worship, Religious and philosophic thought on though it moves in a circle of spiritual such questions as God and Immortality ideas, not indeed distinctly conceived, but thus so run into each other in their re-floating like shadows unrealized in the inspective beginnings as to be then indis- dividual and general consciousness. The tinguishable. Philosophy springs out of gods are conceived more or less under religion is the attempt of a devout re-physical forms, and so thought is occupied flective man to understand and explain with the visible manifestations of the gods himself and the universe. Hence the roots and their present relations to man rather of ancient, therefore of modern, thought than with modes of being and relations our subject must be sought in the invisible and future. ancient religions.

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Thus intimations of a belief in a life Immortality is not a doctrine of the after death could not be numerous, but schools, but a faith of Humanity, not the sparseness of the intimations does not based on the metaphysic or proved by the argue the uncertainty of the belief. Agni † logic of a given system, but the utterance Soma, the Maruts.§ Mitra and Varuna.|| of an instinct common to the race which are implored to grant immortality. By has made itself heard wherever man has liberality ¶ and sacrifice ** a man "attains advanced from a religion of nature to a immortality," "goes to the gods," meets religion of faith. And there is no article in the highest heaven the recompense of of belief he so reluctantly surrenders even the sacrifices he has offered. The Vedic to the demands of system. One of the notion of immortality was not, indeed, like most daring critical and speculative spirits ours, a positive abstract conception, but of the day has, with caustic irony, rallied an indefinite concrete representation. his transcendental countrymen on their Still it was as comprehensive and affirmatenderness for the ego- a tenderness tive as was possible to these early Hindus, which spared self, while Deity was sacri- - the very immortality attributed to their ficed. And he finds the denial of per- gods. Hence, to them it seemed a spesonal immortality the last step of the inexorable logic which completed the cycle of Transcendental Philosophy.

The discussion must now turn to the historical question, the development of the belief in immortality in India and Greece.

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Muir's Original Sanscrit Texts. v. 284, ff.; Wilson's Hymn's of the Rig-Veda, i. xxv.; Max Muller's Ancient Sans. Lit. 19, note 2. + R.-V., v. 4, 10; i. 31, 7.

R.-V., ix. 113, 7. ff.; Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 306;
R.-V., i. 191, 18.
§ R.-V., v. 55. 4.

R-V., v C3, 2.
TR.-V., i. 125, 5; x. 107, 2.

** x. 14. 8.

tt In certain cases, as possibly R.-V. v. 4 10, the

*

cies of deification. The man who had But the legend survives in the two been made immortal had become a minor branches under two different forms. The deity. Thus, the Ribhus had "become Iranian Yima is the founder and king of a gods," gone to the assemblage of the gods.* golden age, during whose reign neither sickHence, too, the belief is expressed less in ness nor age nor death, neither cold nor the hopes of the living than in their heat, neither hatred nor strife, existed. The thoughts touching the dead. "Our sage Indian Yama is the king of the dead, the ancestors have obtained riches among the assembler of men who departed to the the gods," as "companions of the gods "+mighty streams and spied out the road for they are implored to be "propitious "§ to many. But the legends, though different, "protect," not to injure. The faith in are not contradictory. The tradition of the continued life of the fathers is thus so the first man who lived might well include, strong as to rise almost to apotheosis. or glide into, the tradition of the first man Death had not annihilated the Fathers, who died. In the ordinary course of naneed not annihilate the Sons, and so they ture, the one would be the other; and so pray to be "added to the people of eterni- the legend, in its original form, might ty, the blessed." ** comprehend both the Iranian and Indian The belief in a life after death seems versions. And the division is explicable thus to have grown up round the thought enough. The Iranic, as a reformed faith, of the fathers, or simply the dead. Prim- seeking for itself a moral basis, clung to itive man conscious of "life in every the picture of a golden past, where the anlimb," could know nothing of death could only conceive the dead as still alive. And as the only notion of life outside and above nature was associated with the gods, a life akin to the Divine was attributed to the departed ancestors. Thus the belief stands enshrined in the heart of the Vedic religion, interwoven, on the one hand, with the idea of God, on the other, with the memory of the Fathers. And that it had grown with the history of the people, a primitive legend seems to show. In the later books of the Rig-Veda the future life stands impersonated, as it were, in Yama. Now Yama is the Iranian Yima. His father is in the Vedas Vivasvat, in the Zend Avesta Vivanghat. The names in each case are identical, and indicate that some legend connected with them must have existed prior to the separation of the Indian and Iranian Aryans.

Immortality meant was to be realized on earth in offspring (Muir, Sans. Texts, v. 285, note 415). But a comparison of the above texts with iv. 54, 2; vi. 7, 4; ix. 106, 8; x. 53, 10, &c, will bear out the statement of the text. In truth, Vedic thought had not yet learned to affirm an absolute immortality.

R.-V., i, 161, 1-5; iv. 35, 3, and 8. Muir, Sans. Texts, v. 226 and 284.

↑ R.-V., i. 91, 1; i. 179, 6.

+ R.-V., vii. 76, 4.

SR.-V., vi. 75, 10; vii, 35, 12.
R.V., vi. 52, 4.

iii. 55, 2.

vii. 57, 6. Muir, Sans, Texts, v. 28, 5.

+ It is not possible to enter here in any satisfactory way into any of the many questions, critical. philosophical, mythological, historical, connected with this legend. As to its existence in the Aryan period, and its bearing on the relationship of the Iranian and Indian branches, see Dr. Muir, Sanscrit Texts, ii 296, 469, f; Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumsk. 439 f.; Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk. i. 619, ff. (2nd ed.) For an exhaustive critical and philosophical discussion of the legend under its Iranian and Indian forms, see Prof. Roth's Article, Die Sage von Dechemschid," Zeitsch. d. Deuts. Morganl. Ge

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tagonisms it hated were unknown. The Indian, less moral, more imaginative, caught in the toils of a nature-worship, sighed for relief and sought it in the kingdom of light into which the son of Vivasvat had been the first to return. And so, while the legend in the one case passed through a series of developments in which Yima and his golden age gradually deteriorated, it became in the other the centre round which the Hindu doctrine of the future life developed. The processes were similar, but the result different, because the mythical faculty had its objects placed in different spheres.

Yama, then, is the highest expression of the later Vedic faith in a future life. He dwells in celestial light, in the innermost sanctuary of heaven.f.He and the Fathers are "in the highest heaven." He grants to the departed "an abode distinguished by days, and waters, and lights." He

sel., iv. 417, 433. Also, Duncker's Geschichte der
Arier, 453, ff. For a discussion as well as an anno
tated translation of the passages in the Rig-Veda
referring to Yama, see Dr. Muir's Sanscrit Texts, v.
287, ff.; 300, ff. Professor Max Muller, Lectures on
the Science of Language, ii. 481, ff., resolves the Ya-
ma legend as given in the Rig-Veda into one of the
myths of the Dawn, Yama. the day, Yami. his sis-
ter, the night. Without attempting to discuss the
question with the above distinguished scholar, I may
simply say that his mythological theory seems to me
to be too narrow and exclusive. It is so occupied
with nature as to leave little or no room for the ex-
ercise of thought and imagination upon the condi-
tion and destiny of man. The tragic elements of
human life, birth and death, must have touched
primitive mind quite as profoundly as the rising and
the setting sun; and the Yama legend appears to be
pre-eminently one of those in which the thoughts
of men concerning man found expression.
* R.-V., x. 14, 1; Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 291, ff.
† R.-V., ix. 113, 7 and 8; Muir's Sans. Texts, v.
302.
R.-V., x. 14, 8 and 9.

grants a "long life among the gods."* The influence of this sacerdotalism on He is associated with the god Varuna, the development of the Hindu faith in worshipped as a god, and "feasts accord- general, and the belief in the future life ing to his desire on the oblations."+"He of the soul in particular, must here be disshares his gratification with the eager tinctly recognized. The question is not Vasishthas, our ancient ancestors who as to its origin, but as to its influence. Its presented the Soma libation." Yama source is psychological, and it forms an esand the Fathers thus enjoy immortal bles-sential element in all religions - is represedness in heaven. Such was the intense sented in our Christian faith by the sacrifaith of the later Vedic poets. But as the fice and priesthood of Christ; but for reafaith was evolved so was the question—sons which cannot be stated here, it grew How can we be raised to the society of very early to portentous proportions and Yama and the Fathers? Their ancestors, exercised a baneful influence among the the men of the heroic age which lies al-Hindus. The Vedic religion may be deways in the past, deserved to be made im- scribed as a naturalism with a nascent samortal, but how was immortality possible cerdotalism super-induced. In the earlier to their less worthy sons? And here a Vedic era the natural was the predomi decisive and determinating peculiarity of nant element, but in the later the sacerthe early Hindu faith emerged. Future dotal. When a religion is passing through happiness had a sacerdotal, as distin- such a phase of development, there runs guished from a religious, or moral, or na- beneath or within it a stream of what may tional basis-rested, not so much on vir- be termed unconscious metaphysics- -gentue or heroism, as on the worship of sacer- eral tendencies understood at the time in dotal deities and the practice of sacerdotal whole by few, perhaps by none, underrites. The old natural deities, though stood in part by many, but felt by all. now and then implored to grant immortal- The new element has to assert and justify ity, are as a rule, limited to action in the itself against the old by creating for the sphere of the present and the seen; but religion it seeks to transform a new basis, the sacerdotal deities, i.e., gods formed radically different from the old naturalism; from the deification of the instruments of and so the result is a two-fold developworship, were the great distributors of ment-the growth of religious rites on future happiness. Thus, Agni is "made the one hand, and of abstract conceptions by the gods the centre of immortality," § on the other. But while the former are guards and exalts mortals to it; || warms manifested in the general constitution and with his heat the unborn part and conveys practice of religion, the latter can appear it to the world of the righteous. Soma only in particular and partial utterances. "confers immortality on gods and men." ** Here and there an individual gathers into He is implored to place his worshipper "in himself the dim and diffused consciousness that everlasting and imperishable world of the people, expresses it in hymn or where there is eternal light and glory." †† aphorism, and the expression, a mirror to Those who have drunk the Soma have the collective mind, seems the result of "become immortal," "have entered into Divine inspiration. Hence, while the light." Then sacerdotal rites like sac- speculative and mystical hymns in the rifice, or virtues like liberality to the tenth book of the Rig-Veda form, in alpriests, purchase immortality. §§ So com- most every respect, contrasts to the sponprehensive and absolute is the supremacy taneous and objective compositions of the of the sacerdotal element in the later earlier books, they are yet only concenVedic religion that the other gods are trated utterances of thoughts which have now and then represented as dependent been throughout the whole Vedic era for immortality and enjoyment upon the slowly accumulating and assuming consistsacerdotal deities or rites. ency and shape. They are like early spring flowers, at once manifestations of forces at work in the earth and prophecies of what is to come.

R.-V., x., 14, 14. ↑ R.-V., x. 14, 7; x. 15, 8. + R.-V., x. 15, 8. SR.-V., iii. 17, 4.

R.-V., i. 31, 7; vii. 7, 7.

R.-V., x. 16, 4. See also passages from AtharvaVeda, in Dr. Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 299, ff.

** R.-V., i. 91. 1, 6, 18; ix. 108, 3; ix. 109, 3. See also the chapter on Indra's love of the Soma-juice,

in Dr. Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 88, ff.

tt R.-V., ix. 113, 7, f.

‡‡ R.-V., viii. 48, 3.

§§ R.-V., x. 154, 3-5; x. 107, 2.

This double growth of sacerdotalism and abstract thought stands very clearly revealed in the tenth book of the RigVeda. The priesthood is professional, a priest necessary to worship. The sacrificial rites are numerous and minute. The

Several illustrative passages will be found in value attached to prayers, hymns, sacrifices, excessive. The new sacerdotalism is

Dr. Muir's Sans. Texts, v. 14, ff.

73

superseding the old naturalism, and ab- | restored by sacrifice. stract thought is seen struggling to find a vined that unity in the source of life imnew basis and new forms for the changing plied the creation and derivative immorThought had direligion. Creation is conceived as a sacri- tality of the gods. It had deified the fafice, either the self-immolation of a god, or thers, deified the rishis, and so had learned the immolation of one god, by others.* to conceive the permanent element in man Sacrifice is the cause of human prosperity as akin to the divine. On this ground preand the processes of nature. The Brah- and post-existence become alike natural, man is the son of god, sprung from divine complementary conceptions. And so Agni seed. The Vedic poets are the organs is implored in a funeral hymn to kindle and offspring of deity.§ The hymns are with his heat the "unborn part divine, god-generated, or given, and enter dead; to "give up again to the Fathers " of the into the Rishis by sacrifice. The specu- him who comes offered with oblations."* lative tendencies thus incline to assume To the soul of the departed it is said, sacerdotal forms. Now and then, indeed," Throwing off all imperfection again go an exceptional thinker, either above or to thy home."t Man has had a past, will outside priestly influence, asks and tries have a future, has come from God and to answer the profoundest questions in may to God return. simple but sublime words. Speculation, side to the thought indicative of its ultiAnd there is another partly the victim of the old naturalism as mate anthropological form, as distinguished embalmed in language, partly the seer and from the other, or theological. The dead exponent of the eternal truths there con- is told to "become united to a body and tained, finds in life ever emerging from clothed in a shining form." The varied death the principle that abides amid the constituents of the body are told to go to decay and renewal of nature and man. the elements to which they are akin.§ This, indeed, is but guessed at not ex- The like seeks the like. Without body or plicitly developed but the guess extends form individual life is inconceivable. And to the procession of gods and men from a over all sacrifice presides, bringing the common source of life. The seeds of gods to receive the "unborn part," carryHindu speculation lie like the germs of ing it to the homes of Yama and the FaBrahmanism in the later Vedic Hymns. thers.

The belief in a life after death expressed in the later Vedic Hymns must in a life after death changes with the In these Vedic Hymns, then, the belief now be looked at in the light of sacerdotal change in the religion. In the older Natand speculative tendencies. Sacerdotal- uralism, it was a simple belief in the conism held command over the future; it tinued life of the fathers; in the later could reward and punish. The realms of embryo-sacerdotalism, it is becoming relight, the world of the righteous, the lated, on its material side, to the idea of society of the fathers, a festive life with God, on its formal, to the observance of Yama, a life in the presence of the gods, religious rites. The older faith had as its immortality in a world where all the ob- objects persons, but the later is slowly rejects of gratification are attained, were in fining its objects into abstractions. its gift. And it also knew an "abyss," ** Pantheism as to God, a theory of transmia "bottomless" and "nethermost ""dark-gration as to man, had not yet been ness" for the wicked. Speculation has to seek a reason or ground for this sacerdotal power, and sees it, in a far-off sort of way, in the unity of human nature with the divine, broken by the earthly life, but

R.-V., x. 81, 5; x. 130, 3. But particularly the celebrated Purusha Sukta, x. 90. See this hymn translated, explained, and illustrated at great length and on all sides in Dr. Muir's Sans. Texts, vol. i. 8, ff.; vol. v. 367, ff.

tR-V., x. 62, 1-3, and very frequently. R.-V., vii. 33, 11-13; x. 62, 4-5.

§ R.-V., x. 20. 10; x. 61, 7.

"

x. 71, 3; x. 125, 3; x. 88, 8; x. 61, 7. See the extraordinary hymn, R-V., x. 129, translated under the title, tion," in Professor Max Muller's Anc. Sans. Lit., p. The Thinker's Ques564. Also by Dr. Muir, iv. 4, and v. 356, ff.; and by Mr. Colebrooke, Essays, p. 17 (Williams and Norgate's edition).

**R.-V., vii. 104, 3, 17; ix. 73, 8. tt R.-V., x. 152, 4; x. 103, 12.

† R.-V., x. 14, 8.

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* R.-V., x. 16, 4-5. R.-V., x. 14, 8. in proof of transmigration being believed when the SR.-V., x. 16, 3. The only verse from the Rig-Veda ever quoted son renders: He who has made (this state of hymns were composed is, i. 164, 32. things) does not comprehend it; he who has beheld Professor Wilit, has it verily hidden (from him); he, whilst yet enveloped in his mother's womb, is subject to many births, and has entered upon evil." (Hymns of the R.-V., vol. ii. 137, 138.) But as the late Professor Goldstucker observed (Art. Transmigration, Chambers' Encyclop.), "The word of the text, bahupratators, is subject to many births,' may, according jah, rendered by Wilson, according to the commenoffsprings,' or 'has many children; ' and as the lat to the same commentators, also mean, has many ter is the more literal and usual sense of the word, whereas the former is artificial, no conclusion whatever regarding the doctrine of transmigration can safely be founded on it." Besides, such a doctrine is entirely alien to Vedic modes of thought.

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