p. 1 | HOW THE SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL CAME TO BE BELIEVED

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 12, 1869

HOW THE SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL CAME TO BE BELIEVED.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

If the reader supposes that the first ideas which the ancients had of the soul were the same as those popular among us now, he needs to be undeceived. The idea that the soul, after the body dies, is an immortal, immaterial, conscious, and active personality, which goes immediately to Heaven or hell, was not arrived at immediately, but is the result of the fancy, the imagination, the poetry, the philosophy, and the laws of many ages. It is interesting to trace its gradual development. The first idea that the ancients conceived of the soul or spirit as existing separate from the body after death, was that of a shadow, or shade, resembling the body in shape, but larger in size. This shade was fancied to be a very thin, misty, aerial, material substance. At first the shades of all, both good and bad, were said to be gathered together under ground in hades, tartarus, or sheol. They were not permitted to visit the upper world among the living. They were said to be in a dreamy, partially-sleeping condition. Gradually they were, by poetic imagination, invested with more life and intelligence, and were assigned employments in hades like those they led on earth. Next, a few were said to come up from their dreary abode, and appear to the living. They represented hades to be a damp, chilly, dismal place. They sighed to return to earth.

Gradually the scene changed with them to still more activity, light, power, and intelligence, till a few privileged ones were raised to dwell on the surface of the earth, then higher in the air, and at last to Heaven. Here they were invested with mighty power as demons, demi-gods, and gods, to rule over the living. Finally, all the good were granted this privilege of going to Heaven. So it was with regard to the punishment of the wicked in hades. At first, only a very few were punished there; then certain crimes in all; at length all the wicked were punished there at death. But this change in the minds of the people was very slow, and reached over a period of many ages. Abundance of testimony could be offered on these points; but I shall only offer a few here. The origin of many of these ideas is thus stated by Alger: “The origin of many notions touching a future state, found in literature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic reveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certain moods, indulged themselves.” “Two general sources have now been described of the barbarian conception in relation to a future state. First, the natural operation of an earnest recollection of the dead; sympathy, regret, and reverence for them, leading the thoughts and heart to grope after them, to brood over the possibilities of their fate, and to express themselves in rites and emblems. Secondly, the mythological or arbitrary creations of the imagination when it is set strongly to work, as it must be by the solemn phenomena associated with death. But beyond these two comprehensive statements, there is, directly related to the matter, and worthy of separate illustration, a curious action of the mind, which has been extensively experienced, and fertile of results. It is the peculiar example of the unconscious impartation of objective existence to mental ideas. With the death of the body, the man does not cease to live in the remembrance, the imagination, and the heart, of his surviving friends. By an unphilosophical confusion, this internal image is credited as an external existence. The dead pass from their customary haunts in our society to the imperishable domain of ideas.” “Fancy and reason thus set at work, speedily construct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire fathers thought, and then thought woos belief.” “Future Life,” pp. 81, 88.

This was the real origin of the notion that the soul lives after the body dies—imagination and desire. Dr. Knapp, in accounting for this doctrine among the ancients, says: “They had dreams, in which the dead appeared to them speaking and acting; and in this way they found their wishes and the traditions they had received from their fathers confirmed anew.” “Christian Theol.,” p. 519. Even now, wishes, dreams, death-bed scenes, &c., are the best proof which many have for the immortality of the soul.

With regard to the first conception of the abode and condition of departed spirits, Dr. Knapp remarks: “Far more general was the opinion among the ancient nations that the abode of departed spirits is under the earth; because the dead are laid beneath the ground, and their body returns to the dust. The souls then separated from their bodies were regarded as a sort of aerial beings, or shades. Taken as a whole, the ancient Eastern nations and the Greeks agreed on this point.” Ibid., p. 524.

The following gives a good general idea of ancient thoughts with regard to the state of the dead. It will be noticed that they all regarded the soul material. “The disembodied soul, as conceived by the Greeks, and after them by the Romans, is material, but of so thin a contexture that it cannot be felt with the hands. It is exhaled with the dying breath, or issues through a warrior’s wounds. The sword passes through its uninjured form as through air. It is to the body what a dream is to waking action. Retaining the shape, the lineaments, and motion, the man had in life, it is immediately recognized upon appearing. It quits the body with much reluctance, leaving that warm and vigorous investiture for a chilly and forceless existence. It glides along without noise, and very swiftly, like a shadow. It is unable to enter the lower kingdom and be at peace until its deserted body has been buried with sacred rites; meanwhile, naked and sad, it flits restlessly about the gates, uttering doleful moans.” “Doctrine of a Future Life,” pp. 175, 176. Thus the happiness of the soul was intimately connected with that of the body. With regard to the gradual development of their ideas of hell, ghosts, &c., he says, “First, then, from a study of the Greek mythology we find all the dead a dull populace of ghosts—fluttering through the neutral melancholy of hades without discrimination. And finally we discern in the world of the dead, a sad middle region, with a Paradise on the right hand, and a hell on the left, the whole presided over by three incorruptible judges, who appoint the new-comers their places in accordance with their deserts.” Ibid., p. 179.

A gradual but constant change, or, if it sounds better to modern ears, improvement, in the ideas of all the ancient nations with regard to the condition of souls in hades and tartarus, is clearly discernible. 1. All, good and bad, went to hades alike. 2. A few of the worst of men were punished in tartarus. 3. Next, certain crimes were punished there, whoever committed them. 4. And, finally, it was the place where all the wicked were punished. 5. So of the good. At first only a few heroes and great men were rewarded in Elysium; then a large class; and finally all the righteous. These facts are clearly stated by Dr. Geo. Christian Knapp, D. D., in his lectures on Christian Theology, now so extensively read. He says, “Both the Hebrews and Greeks describe this under world as a great kingdom, and both use the phrase, gates of death, or hades. Cf. Homer. Here, according to the ideas of men in the earliest ages, the shades of the good and bad dwell together, without any distinction or any marked separation. Thus it is where sheol [?] is introduced in the Old Testament—e. g., Isa. xiv, where there is a kind of distinction of rank, and kings sit upon thrones; but where nothing definite and clear is said respecting a distinction in the places of the pious and the wicked. Thus in Homer, too, even those who are punished are in the same place with the other shades.” “Odys.,” xi, 575, seq.

“But, after a time, those places in the lower world were divided, and the residences of the righteous and the wicked were conceived of as separate.” Sect. 150, pp. 524–526. One important fact cannot fail to be observed, viz.: Instead of the ancients having among them, on the start, a clear and well-defined doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the conscious state of the dead, these ideas have gradually grown up among them, not from an early and clear tradition, but from the causes already given, and others to be named. This is an important fact in our inquiry, and should be well weighed. Another cause which greatly aided the development

of early conceptions concerning the state of the dead, was poets and poetry. These have always had a great influence in shaping the ideas and traditions of rude nations. No subject ever furnished a better theme for poetic fiction and imagination than that of the state and condition of men after death; and in none has greater liberty of fancy been taken than in this. Whoever wishes proof of this may look into the pages of Homer, Milton, Virgil, Dante, &c. These poets have given loose reins to their warm imaginations, to revel in the most horrid scenes. These productions have been eagerly listened to by the people, and the effect has been marked and lasting. These poets were the ones who first taught the ancient heathen their religious tenets. Thus writes Herodotus: “For I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer [poets] lived four hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed the theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms.” “Herod. Euterp.,” ii, 55, p. 116.

Another cause, and, perhaps, the chief one, which aided in developing and supporting a belief in this doctrine, was the interest and authority of priests and lawgivers. Commonly these two offices were united in one person. Of course, the more importance the priests could attach to the soul, and to rewards and punishments after death, the greater influence would they have with the people, and the more readily would they support them. Hence their interest was to build up this doctrine at every opportunity; and history shows that from the Egyptians to the Roman Catholic priests they have not been slack in doing this. So, also, the magistrate found that it greatly aided him in controlling the people, and in keeping them under by threatening them with the wrath of the gods, and future torments for disobedience to his laws. “Hence, also,” says Dr. Horne, “the most celebrated legislators of antiquity, as Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, &c., &c., all thought it necessary to profess some intercourse with Heaven, in order to give the greater sanction to their laws and institutions, notwithstanding many of them were armed with secular power.” Hence he also united his interest with the priest in helping forward this doctrine. Volumes might be, and have been, written, showing that this was the case. The very learned Bishop Warburton, in his “Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated in Nine Books,” has abundantly proved by copious quotations from ancient writers, that what was said about the infernal regions, Elysium, &c., was all invented by the priests and lawgivers to frighten the people, and keep them in subjection. To him and others the reader is referred, while I shall content myself with offering only a few short testimonies. That great historian and geographer, Strabo, thus gives the reason why hell torments were invented by the lawgivers. He also shows the influence poets have had in the matter. He writes thus: “So numbers of our citizens are incited to deeds of virtue by the beauties of fable, when they hear the poets in a strain of enthusiasm, recording noble actions, such as the labors of Hercules or Theseus, and the honors bestowed on them by the gods, or even when they see paintings, sculptures, or figures bearing their romantic evidence to such events. In the same way they are restrained from vicious courses, when they think they have received from the gods, by oracles or some other invisible intimations, threats, menaces, or chastisements, or even if they only believe they have befallen others. The great mass of women and common people cannot be induced, by mere force of reason, to devote themselves to piety, virtue, and honesty; superstition must therefore be employed, and even this is insufficient without the aid of the marvelous and the terrible. For what are the thunderbolts, the aegis, the trident, the torches, the dragons, the barbed thyrses, the arms of the gods, and all the paraphernalia of antique theology, but fables employed by the founders of States, as bugbears to frighten timorous minds. Such was mythology.” “Strabo,” b. i, chap. ii, sec. 8, p. 30.

Yet, indeed, such it was—a mass of frightful fables and bugbears to scare the people into submission. Of the ancient Brahmins, this writer says, “They invent fables also after the manner of Plato, on the immortality of the soul, and on the punishments in hades, and other things of the kind.” “Strabo,” vol. iii, b. xv, chap. i, sec. 59. What Plato and others said about the immortality of the soul, punishments in hades, &c., were understood to be only fables. Another eminent Greek historian, Polybius, b. c. 208, bears a similar testimony, thus: “Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions, and violence, there is no way to keep them in order, but by fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seemed to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions.” B. vi. 56. Dr. Horne bears this testimony: “For, though the poets have prettily fancied, and have portrayed in beautiful and glowing verse, the joys of Elysium, or a place and state of bliss, and the miseries of tartarus, or hell; and though the ancient philosophers and legislators were sensible of their importance to society, and also of the necessity of the doctrine of future punishments, yet they generally discarded them as vain and superstitious terrors.” “Introduction,” vol. i, p. 18. Watson says the same. “Theo. Inst.,” vol. i, part first, chap. vi, p. 54. Says Warburton, “They enforced the belief of a future state of rewards and punishments, by every sort of contrivance.” Alger truthfully observes, “The doctrine of the soul’s survival and transference to another world, where its experience depends on conditions observed or violated here, conditions somewhat in the control of a select class of men here—such a doctrine is the very hiding place of the powers of priestcraft, a vast engine of interest and sway which the shrewd insight of priesthoods has often devised, and the cunning policy of States subscribed.” “Future Life,” pp. 39, 40. The above author thus sums up the causes which operated to establish the heathen nations in these doctrines: “Finally,” says he, “by the combined power, first, of natural conscience affirming a future distinction between the good and the bad; secondly, of imperfect conceptions of God as a passionate avenger; thirdly, of the licentious fancies of poets, drawing awful imaginative pictures of future woe; fourthly, of the cruel spirit, and the ambitious plans of selfish priesthoods; and, fifthly, of the harsh and relentless theories of conforming metaphysicians,—the doctrine of hell, as a located place of manifold, terrific physical tortures, drawing in vast majorities of the human race, became established in the human creeds and enshrined as an orthodox dogma.” “Doctrine of a Future Life,” p. 512.

Having by these means invested the spirits of the dead with an imaginary existence, the next step was to provide a habitation for them while absent from their bodies. Here again they showed their strong attachment to their old materialistic traditions, and their utter ignorance of any purely spiritual, immaterial being. They supposed that, in order for the soul to live, it must be connected with some animal body. The soul came into life connected with a human body, which it reluctantly leaves at death for a certain period till the body shall live again, when the soul will return to it. But what is the habitation of the soul during this interval? The idea of the transmigration of souls was luckily hit upon to fill this want. This doctrine is, that when the soul leaves the dying body it immediately passes into another body which happens to be born at just that moment. When this body also dies, the soul takes possession of another body, and so goes on changing bodies till its cycle of transmigrations is ended, and it returns to its place of habitation. This idea originated very early in the history of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Of transmigration of souls, the “New American Cyclopædia” says: “The idea belongs to the oldest religions of India and Egypt, and is one of the earliest forms in which the doctrine of immortality appears.” “According to Herodotus, the Egyptians were the first to entertain this doctrine.” Art. Metempsychosis. These facts are important, and should be well considered. We have seen that embalming bodies was the first form in which immortality was held by the ancients. The next step in the development of this doctrine was that the soul could live without this body, by being connected with some other body. This was a very important improvement indeed.

This was “one of the earliest forms” in which the immortality of the soul began to be taught. Bunsen, as quoted before, says, “The Egyptians were the first who taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, a fact mentioned by all Greek writers from Herodotus to Aristotle, and one brilliantly confirmed by the monuments. A belief of the transmigration of the human soul into the bodies of animals, which was connected with it, is, as far as we can glean from the mythology of Asia, an Egyptian provincialism.”—“Egypt’s Place in Universal Hist.,” vol. iv, p. 639.

Thus it will be seen that these two doctrines, viz., the survival of the soul after death, and its transmigration into other bodies, were inseparably connected at first, and both originated in Egypt. In those early times they had not yet conceived the idea that the soul could live a moment unless connected with some animal body. This appears to be the true idea which originated the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. All souls, both good and bad, alike partook in this transmigration. At first the idea of rewards or punishments does not seem to have been connected with it. It was a natural condition to which all were subject. Afterwards this was refined and improved upon very much, as we shall see. On this point the learned Dr. Knapp remarks: “Originally this transmigration of souls was not regarded as a matter of retribution, or as a means of purification. This turn was not given to the doctrine until a period of higher cultivation.” “Christ. Theol.,” sec. 150, p. 523. We shall notice other improvements that were made in this doctrine gradually, and by different individuals.

D. M. CANRIGHT.