Chapter XII: Part IV: Platonic Poets (2)

The vitality of the doctrine of Reincarnation does not in the least depend upon a scriptural endorsement of it, but the fact that it is surprisingly conspicuous here is certainly interesting and confirmatory. Every candid Christian student must acknowledge that the revelation of truth is no more confined to the central book of Christendom than sunshine is limited to the Orient. There must be great principles of philosophy, like that of evolution, outside of the Bible; and yet the most skeptical thinker has to concede that this volume is the richest treasury of wisdom,—the best of which is still unlearned.

Although most Christians are unaware of it, reincarnation is strongly present in the Bible, chiefly in the form of preëxistence. It is not inculcated as a doctrine essential to redemption. Neither is immortality. But it is taken for granted, cropping out here and there as a fundamental rock. Some scholars consider it an unimportant oriental speculation which is accidentally entangled into the texture. But the uniform strength and beauty of its hold seem to rank it with the other essential threads of the warp upon which is woven the noblest fabric of religious thought.

A sufficient evidence of the Biblical support of pre-existence, and of the consequent wide-spread belief in it among the Jews, is found in Solomon’s long reference to it among his Proverbs. The wise king wrote of himself: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before the works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no foundations abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the foundations of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.”[34] This passage disposes of the theory of Delitzsch that preëxistence in the Bible means simply an existence in the foreknowledge of the creator. Such a mere foreknowledge would not place him previous to the parts of creation which preceded his earthly appearance. And the last two clauses clearly express a prior physical life. The prophets, too, are assured of their pre-natal antiquity. Jeremiah hears Jehovah tell him, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.”[35]

Skipping passages of disputed interpretation in Job and the Psalms which suggest this idea, there is good evidence for it all through the Old Testament, which is universally conceded by commentators, and was always claimed by the Jewish rabbis. The translators have distinguished the revealed form of Deity, as successively recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, by the word LORD, in capitals, separating this use of the word from other forms, as the preëxistent Christ. “The angel of the Lord” and “the angel of Jehovah” are other expressions for the same manifestation of the Highest, which modern theology regards as the second person of the Trinity. Wherever God is said to have appeared as man, to Abraham at Mamre, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua at Gilgal, to the three captives in the Babylonian furnace as “a fourth, like to the Son of God,” etc., Christian scholarship has maintained this to be the same person who afterward became the son of Mary. The Jews also consider these various appearances to be their promised Christ. After the captivity they held the same view concerning all persons. The apocryphal “Wisdom of Solomon” teaches unmistakably the preëxistence of human souls in Platonic form, although it probably is older than Philo, as when it says (ix. 15), “I was an ingenuous child, and received a good soul; nay, more, being good, I came into a body undefiled;” and “the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.” Glimpses of it appear also in “Ecclesiasticus.”

The assertion of Josephus that this idea was common among the Pharisees is proven in the Gospels, where members of the Sanhedrin cast the retort at Jesus, “Thou wast altogether born in sins.”[36] The prevalence of this feeling in the judgments of daily life is seen in the question put to Jesus by his disciples, “Which did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”[37] referring to the two contending popular theories, that of Moses, who taught that the sins of the fathers would descend on the children to the third and fourth generation, and that of reincarnation, subsequently adopted, by which a man’s discomforts resulted from his former misconduct. Jesus’ reply, “Neither,” is no denial of the truth of reincarnation, for in other passages he definitely affirms it of himself, but merely an indication that he thought this truth had better not be given those listeners then, just as he withheld other verities until the ripe time for utterance. This very expression of preëxistence used by the disciples he employs toward the man whom he healed at Bethesda’s pool after thirty-eight years of paralysis: “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”[38] Repeatedly he confirms the popular impression that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah. To the throng around him he said: “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.” “If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.”[39] That John the Baptist denied his former personality as Elijah is not strange, for no one remembers distinctly his earlier life. Often Jesus refers to his descent from heaven, as when he says, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me;”[40] and what he means by heaven is shown by his words to Nicodemus, “No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man _which is in heaven_.”[41] The inference is that the heaven in which he formerly lived was similar to the heaven of that moment, namely earth. Again, Jesus asked his disciples, “Whom say men that I am?” And his disciples state the popular thought in answering, “Some say Elijah, others Jeremiah, and others one of the old prophets.” “But whom say ye that I am?” Peter, the spokesman, replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of God,” and so expresses another phase of the same prevailing idea, for the Christ was also an Old Testament personage. And Jesus approves this response. After Herod had decapitated John the Baptist, the appearance of Jesus, also preaching and baptizing, roused in him the apprehension that the prophet he killed had come again in a second life.

Preëxistence, the premise necessarily leading to reincarnation, is the keynote of the most spiritual of the Gospels. The initial sentence sounds it, the body of the book often repeats it, and the final climax is strengthened by it. From the proem, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God,” all through the story occur frequent allusions to it: “The word was made flesh” (John i. 14); “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven” (vi. 51); “Ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before” (vi. 62); “Before Abraham was, I am” (viii. 58); and finally, “Glorify thou me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (xvii. 5); “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (xvii. 24). It is always phrased in such a form as might be asserted by any one, though the speaker says it only of himself.

What the fourth Gospel dwells upon so fondly, and what is echoed in other New Testament books,—as in Philippians ii. 7, “He took on him the form of a servant,” in 2 Cor. viii. 9, “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,” and in 1 John i. 2, “That eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,”—is a thought not limited to the Christ. Precisely the same occurs in the mention of the prophet-baptizer John: “There was a man sent from God” (John i. 6). The obvious sense of this verse to the Christians nearest its publication appears in the comments upon it by Origen, who says that it implies the existence of John the Baptist’s soul previous to his terrestrial body, and hints at the universal belief in preëxistence by adding, “And if the _Catholic opinion_ hold good concerning the soul, as not propagated with the body, but existing previously and for various reasons clothed in flesh and blood, this expression, ‘sent from God,’ will no longer seem extraordinary as applied to John.” No words could more exactly suit the aspirations of an oriental believer in reincarnation than these in the Apocalypse: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, _and he shall go no more out_” (Rev. iii. 12).

More important than any separate quotations is the general tone of the Scriptures, which points directly toward reincarnation. They represent the earthly life as a pilgrimage to the heavenly country of spiritual union with God. It is our conceit and ignorance alone which deems a single earthly life sufficient to accomplish that purpose. They teach the sinful nature of all men and their responsibility for their sin, which certainly demands previous lives for the acquisition of that condition, as shown well by Chevalier Ramsay. (See pages 83–87.) St. Paul’s idea of the Fall and of God are precisely those of Philo and Origen. The Bible also treats Paradise as the ancient abode of man and his future home, which requires a series of reincarnations as the connecting chain.

VIII.
REINCARNATION IN EARLY CHRISTENDOM.

Our soul having lost its heavenly mansion came down into the earthly
body as a strange place.—PHILO.

The soul leaving the body becomes that power which it has most
developed. Let us fly, then, from here below, and rise to the
intellectual world, that we may not fall into a purely sensible life,
by allowing ourselves to follow sensible images; or into a vegetative
life, by abandoning ourselves to the pleasures of physical love and
gluttony: let us rise, I say, to the intellectual world, to
intelligence, to God himself.—PLOTINUS.

The order of things is regulated by the providential government of the
whole world; some powers falling down from a loftier position, others
gradually sinking to earth: some falling voluntarily, others being
cast down against their will: some undertaking of their own accord the
service of stretching out the hand to those who fall, others being
compelled to persevere for a long time in the duty which they have
undertaken.—JEROME.

All that flesh doth cover
Souls by source sublime
Are but slaves sold over
To the master Time,
To work out their ransom
For the ancient crime.

VIII.
REINCARNATION IN EARLY CHRISTENDOM.

The first centuries of Christianity found reincarnation still the prevailing creed, as in all the previous ages, but with various shades of interpretation. What these different phases of the same central thought were may be gathered from Jerome’s catalogue, after the strife between Eastern and Western ideas had been working for some centuries and the present tendency of Europe had asserted itself. Jerome writes: “As to the origin of the soul, I remember the question of the whole church: whether it be fallen from heaven, as Pythagoras and the Platonists and Origen believe; or be of the proper substance of God, as the Stoics, Manichæans and Priscillian heretics of Spain believe; or whether they are kept in a repository formerly built by God, as some ecclesiastics foolishly believe; or whether they are daily made by God and sent into bodies according to that which is written in the Gospel: ‘My Father worketh hitherto and I work;’ or whether by traduction, as Tertullian, Apollinarius, and the greater part of the Westerns believe, _i. e._, that as body from body so the soul is derived from the soul, subsisting by the same condition with animals.”

In the form of Gnosticism it so strongly pervaded the early church that the fourth Gospel was specially directed against it; but this Gospel according to John attacked it only by advocating a broader rendering of the same faith. We have seen that Origen refers to preëxistence as the general opinion. Clemens Alexandrinus (Origen’s master) taught it as a divine tradition authorized by St. Paul himself in Romans v. 12, 14, 19. Ruffinus in his letter to Anastasius says that “This opinion was common among the primitive fathers.” Later, Jerome relates that the doctrine of transmigration was taught as an esoteric one communicated to only a select few. But Nemesius emphatically declared that all the Greeks who believed in immortality believed also in metempsychosis. Delitzsch says, “It had its advocates as well in the synagogues as in the church.”

The Gnostics and Manichæans received it, with much else, from Zoroastrian predecessors. The Neo-Platonists derived it chiefly from a blending of Plato and the Orient. The Church Fathers drew it not only from these sources, but from the Jews and the pioneers of Christianity. Several of them condemn the Persian and Platonic philosophies and yet hold to reincarnation in other guises. Aside from all authority, the doctrine seems to have been rooted among the inaugurators of our era in its adaptation to their mental needs, as the best explanation of the ways of God and the nature of men.

I. The Gnostics were a school of eclectics which became conspicuous amid the chaotic vortex of all religions in Alexandria, during the first century. They sought to furnish the young Christian church with a philosophic creed, and ranked themselves as the only initiates into a mystical system of Christian truth which was too exalted for the masses. Their thought was an elaborate structure of Greek ideas built upon Parsee Dualism, maintaining that the world was created by some fallen spirit or principle, and that the spirits of men were enticed from a preëxistent higher stage by the Creator into the slavery of material bodies. The evils and sins of life belong only to the degraded prison-house of the spirit. The world is only an object of contempt. Virtue consists in severest asceticism. To combat their theory that Jesus was one of a vast number of beings between man and God, the fourth Gospel was written. They spread widely through the first and second centuries in many branches of belief. But most of their strength was absorbed into Manichæism, which was a more logical union of Persian with Christian and Greek ideas. In this simple faith the world is a creation not of a fallen spirit, but of the primary evil principle, while the spirit of man is the creation of God, and the conflict between flesh and spirit is that between the powers of light and darkness. The Gnostic and Manichæan notions of preëxistence perpetuated themselves in many of the medieval sects, especially the Bogomiles, Paulicians, and Priscillians. Seven adherents of the Priscillian heresy were put to death in Spain A. D. 385, as the first instance of the death penalty visited by a Christian magistrate for erroneous belief. The Italian Cathari were another sect holding this form of reincarnation, against whom the Albigensian Crusade of the elder De Montfort was sent, and the inquisition devised by St. Dominic. Still they thrived in secret and possessed a disguised hierarchy which long survived their violent persecution. Similar sects descended from them still exist among the Russian dissenters.

II. Contemporary with the Alexandrian Gnostics arose the philosophical school of the Neo-Platonists which gathered into one the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and Buddhism,[42] and constructed a theology which might make headway against Christianity by satisfying in a rational way the longings which the new religion addressed. They too disclosed the reality and nearness of a spiritual world, a reconciliation with God, and the pathway for returning to Him. The distinguishing principle of Neo-Platonism is _emanation_, which took the place of creation. From the eternal Intelligence proceeds the multiplicity of souls which comprise the intelligible world, and of which the worldsoul is the highest and all-embracing source. They insisted upon the distinct individuality of each soul, and earnestly combated the charge of Pantheism. Souls who have descended into the delusion of matter did so from pride and a desire of false independence. They now forget their former estate and the Father whom they have deserted. The mission of men, in the dying words of Plotinus, is “to bring the divine within them into harmony with that which is divine in the universe.” The Neo-Platonists fought Gnosticism as fiercely as Christianity. Plotinus, by far the best of their writers, as well as the oldest whose works are preserved, devotes a whole book of his Enneads to the refutation of the doctrines of Valentinus, the brightest of the Gnostics. Contrary to the latter’s thought, that men are fallen into the miry pit of matter which is wholly bad, Plotinus claims that the world of matter, although the least divine part of the universe because remotest from the One, is still good and the best place for man’s development. From its former life he insists the soul has not fallen and cannot, but has descended into the lower stage of existence through innate weakness of intellect in order to be prepared for a higher exaltation.

The most important of this group of thinkers were Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry in the third century, Jamblichus in the fourth, Hierocles and Proclus in the fifth, and Damascius in the sixth. It flourished with energy for over three hundred years, and as its ideas were largely appropriated by Christian theologians and philosophers, beginning with Origen, it has never ceased to be felt through Christendom. Giordano Bruno, the martyr of the Italian reformation, popularized it, and handed it over to later philosophers. The philosophy of Emerson is substantially a revival of Plotinus. Coleridge is also strongly influenced by him.

As Plotinus is in some respects the most interesting of all the older writers, and taught reincarnation in a form thoroughly rational and supremely helpful, meeting Western needs in this regard more directly than any other philosopher, we quote at some length from his scarce essay on “The Descent of the Soul.”

“When any particular soul acts in discord from the One, flying from the whole and apostasizing from thence by a certain disagreement, no longer beholding an intelligible nature, from its partial blindness, in this case it becomes deserted and solitary, impotent and distracted with care; for it now directs its mental eye to a part, and by a separation from that which is universal, attaches itself as a slave to one particular nature. It thus degenerates from the whole and governs particulars with anxiety and fatigue, assiduously cultivating externals and becoming not only present with body, but profoundly entering into its dark abodes. Hence, too, by such conduct the wings of the soul are said to suffer a defluxion and she becomes fettered with the bonds of body, after deserting the safe and innoxious habit of governing a better nature which flourishes with universal soul. The soul, therefore, falling from on high, suffers captivity, is loaded with fetters, and employs the energies of sense; because in this case her intellectual longing is impeded from the first. She is reported also to be buried and to be concealed in a cave; but when she converts herself to intelligence she then breaks her fetters and ascends on high, receiving first of all from reminiscence the ability of contemplating real beings; at the same time possessing something supereminent and ever abiding in the intelligible world. Souls therefore are necessarily of an amphibious nature, and alternately experience a superior and inferior condition of being; such as are able to enjoy a more intimate converse with Intellect abiding for a longer period in the higher world, and such to whom the contrary happens, either through nature or fortune, continuing longer connected with these inferior concerns.”...

“Thus, the soul, though of divine origin, and proceeding from the regions on high, becomes merged in the dark receptacle of the body, and being naturally a posterior god, it descends hither through a certain voluntary inclination, for the sake of power and of adorning inferior concerns. By this means it receives a knowledge of its latent powers, and exhibits a variety of operations peculiar to its nature, which by perpetually abiding in an incorporeal habit, and never proceeding into energy, would have been bestowed in vain. Besides the soul would have been ignorant of what she possessed, her powers always remaining dormant and concealed: since energy everywhere exhibits capacity, which would otherwise be entirely occult and obscure, and without existence, because not endued with one substantial and true. But now indeed every one admires the intellectual powers of the soul, through the variety of her external effects.”...

“Through an abundance of desire the soul becomes profoundly merged into matter, and no longer totally abides with the universal soul. Yet our souls are able alternately to rise from hence carrying back with them an experience of what they have known and suffered in their fallen state; from whence they will learn how blessed it is to abide in the intelligible world, and by a comparison, as it were, of contraries, will more plainly perceive the excellence of a superior state. For the experience of evil produces a clearer knowledge of good. This is accomplished in our souls according to the circulations of time, in which a conversion takes place from subordinate to more exalted natures.

“Indeed, if it were proper to speak clearly what appears to me to be the truth, contrary to the opinions of others, the whole of our soul also does not enter into the body, but something belonging to it always abides in the intelligible, and something different from this in the sensible world: and that which abides in the sensible world, if it conquers, or rather if it is vanquished and disturbed, does not permit us to perceive that which the supreme part of the soul contemplates; for that which is understood then arrives at our nature when it descends within the limits of sensible inspection. For every soul possesses something which inclines downwards to body, and something which tends upwards toward intellect; and the soul, indeed, which is universal and of the universe, by its part which is inclined towards body, governs the whole without labor and fatigue, transcending that which it governs.

“But souls which are particular and of a part are too much occupied by sense, and by a perception of many things happening contrary to nature are surrounded by a multitude of foreign concerns. It is likewise subject to a variety of affections, and is ensnared by the allurements of pleasure. But the superior part of the soul is never influenced by fraudulent delights, and lives a life always uniform and divine.”

III. Many of the orthodox Church Fathers welcomed reincarnation as a ready explanation of the fall of man and the mystery of life, and distinctly preached it as the only means of reconciling the existence of suffering with a merciful God. It was an essential part of the church philosophy for many centuries in the rank and file of Christian thought, being stamped with the authority of the leading thinkers of Christendom, and then gradually was frowned upon as the Western influences predominated, until it became heresy and at length survived only in a few scattered sects.

Justin Martyr expressly speaks of the soul inhabiting more than once the human body, and denies that on taking a second time the embodied form it can remember previous experiences. Afterwards, he says, souls which have become unworthy to see God in human guise, are joined to the bodies of wild beasts. Thus he openly defends the grosser phase of metempsychosis.

Clemens Alexandrinus is declared by a contemporary to have written “wonderful stories about metempsychosis and many worlds before Adam.”

Arnobius, also, is known to have frankly avowed this doctrine.

Noblest of all the church advocates of this opinion was Origen. He regarded the earthly history of the human race as one epoch in an historical series of changeful decay and restoration, extending backward and forward into æons; and our temporal human body as the place of purification for our spirits exiled from a happier existence on account of sin. He taught that souls were all originally created by God _minds_ of the same kind and condition, that is of the same essence as the infinite Mind, and that they exercised their freedom of will, some wisely and well, others with abuse in different degrees, producing the divergences now apparent in mankind. From that old experience some souls have retained more than others of the pristine condition. The lapsed souls God clothed with bodies and sent into this world, both to expiate their temerity and to prepare themselves for a better future. The variety of their offenses caused the diversity of their terrestrial conditions. In these bodies, each enjoys that lot which most exactly suited his previous habits. On these the whole earthly circumstances of man, internal and external, even his whole life from birth, depend. In this way alone he thought the justice of God could be defended. But when men keep themselves free from contagion in bodily existence and restrain the turbulent movements of sense and imagination, being gradually purified from the body they ascend on high and are at last changed into _minds_, of which the earthly souls are corruptions. In his own words, “Here is the cause of the diversing among rational creatures, not in the will or decision of the creature, but in the freedom of individual liberty. For God justly disposing of his creatures according to their desert united the diversities of minds in one congruous world, that he might, as it were, adorn his mansion (in which ought to be not only vases of gold and silver, but of wood also and clay, and some to honor and some to dishonor) with these diverse vases, minds, or souls. To these causes the world owes its diversity, while Divine Providence disposes each according to his tendency, mind, and disposition.”

“If from unknown reasons the soul be already not exactly worthy of being born in an irrational body, nor yet exactly in one purely rational, it is furnished with a monstrous body, so that reason cannot be fully developed by one thus born, the nature of the body being fashioned either of a higher or lower body according to the scope of the reason.”

“I think this is a question how it happens that the human mind is influenced now by the good now by the evil. The causes of this I suspect to be more ancient than this corporeal birth.”

“If our course be not marked out according to our works before this life, how is it true that it is not unjust in God that the elder should serve the younger and be hated, before he had done things deserving of servitude and of hatred.”

“By the fall and by the cooling from a life of the Spirit came that which is now the soul, which is also capable of a return to her original condition, of which I think the prophet speaks in this: ‘Return unto thy rest, O my soul.’ So that the whole is this—how the mind becomes a soul and how the soul rectified becomes a mind.”

Concerning preëxistence in the Bible, Origen writes, in his “De Principiis”: “The Holy Scriptures have called the creation of the world by a new and peculiar name, terming it καταβολή, which has been very improperly translated into Latin by ‘constitutio’; for in Greek καταβολή; signifies rather ‘dejicere,’ _i. e._, to cast downwards,—a word which has been improperly translated into Latin by the phrase ‘constitutio mundi,’ as where the Saviour says, ‘And there will be tribulation in those days, such as was not since the beginning of the world;’[43] in which passage καταβολή is rendered by beginning (constitutio). The Apostle also has employed the language, saying, ‘Who hath chosen us before the foundation of the world;’[44] and this foundation he calls καταβολή, to be understood in the same sense as before. It seems worth while, then, to inquire what is meant by this new term; and I am, indeed, of the opinion that as the end and consummation of the saints will be in those (ages) which are not seen, and are eternal, we must conclude that rational creatures had also a similar beginning. And if they had a beginning such as the end for which they hope, they existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in those (ages) which are not seen, and are eternal. And if this is so, then there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition, on the part not only of those souls who have deserved the change by the variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against their will. From this it follows that by the use of the word καταβολή, a descent from a higher to a lower condition, shared by all in common, would seem to be pointed out. The hope of freedom is entertained by the whole of creation—of being liberated from the corruption of slavery—when the sons of God, who either fell away or were scattered abroad, shall be gathered into one, and when they shall have fulfilled their duties in this world.”

Many contemporaneous and subsequent writers censured Origen for this opinion, but his doctrine was maintained by a large number of strong followers and independent thinkers.

Even in Jerome and Augustine certain passages indicate that they held this theory in part. In his Epistle to Avitus, Jerome agrees with Origen as to the interpretation of the passage above mentioned by Origen, “Who hath chosen us before the foundation of the world.” He says “a divine habitation, and a true rest above, I think, is to be understood, where rational creatures dwelt, and where, before their descent to a lower position, and removal from invisible to visible (worlds), and fall to earth, and need of gross bodies, they enjoyed a former blessedness. Whence God the Creator made for them bodies suitable to their humble position, and created this visible world and sent into the world ministers for their salvation.”

The Latin Fathers Nemesius, Synesius, and Hilarius boldly defend preëxistence, though taking exception to Origen’s form of it. Of Synesius, most familiar to English readers as the convent patriarch in “Hypatia,” it is known that when the citizens of Ptolemais invited him to their bishopric, he declined that dignity for the reason that he cherished certain opinions which they might not approve, as after mature reflection they had struck deep roots in his mind. Foremost among these he mentioned the doctrine of preëxistence. Vestiges of this belief are discerned in his writings; for example, in the Greek hymn paraphrased as follows:—

Eternal Mind, thy seedling spark
Through this thin vase of clay
Athwart the waves of chaos dark
Emits a timorous ray!

This mind-enfolding soul is sown
Incarnate germ in earth.
In pity, blessed Lord, then own
What claims in Thee its birth.

Far forth from Thee, Thou central fire,
To earth’s sad bondage cast,
Let not the trembling spark expire,
Absorb Thine own at last.

Another of this group, Prudentius, entertained nearly the same idea as that of Origen concerning the soul’s descent from higher seats to earth, as appears in one of his hymns:—

O Saviour, bid my soul, thy trembling spouse,
Return at last to Thee believing.
Bind, bind anew those all unearthly vows
She broke on high and wandered grieving.

Although Origen’s teaching was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 551, it permanently colored the stream of Christian theology, not only in many scholastics and medieval heterodoxies, but through all the later course of religious thought, in many isolated individuals and groups.

IX.
REINCARNATION IN THE EAST TO-DAY.

A man may travel from one end of the kingdom to the other without
money, feeding and lodging as well as the people.

A MISSIONARY IN BURMAH.

Buddhism has not deceived, and it has not persecuted. In this
respect it can teach Christians a lesson. The unconditioned command,
“Thou shalt not kill,” which applies to all living creatures, has
had great influence in softening the manners of the Monguls. This
command is connected with the doctrine of transmigration of souls,
which is one of the essential doctrines of this system as well as of
Brahmanism. Buddhism also inculcates a positive humanity consisting
of good actions.—JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

He lived musing the woes of man,
The ways of fate, the doctrines of the books,
The secrets of the silence whence all come,
The secrets of the gloom whereto all go,
The life that lies between like that arch flung
From cloud to cloud across the sky, which hath
Mists for its masonry and vapory piers.
THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

IX.
REINCARNATION IN THE EAST TO-DAY.

The religious philosophy of the Orient, like everything else there,
remains now substantially the same as in the earliest times. History
cannot say when Brahmanism did not flourish among the multitudes of
India. Buddhism, the later Protestant phase of the old faith, which
abolished its abuses of priesthood and caste and spread its
reformation broadcast through Asia, did not alter the original
teaching of re-birth, but rather confirmed and popularized the truth
that has lain at the heart of India from remotest ages. Reincarnation
is the sap-root of eastern religion and permeates the Veda scriptures.

While it is claimed by the West that the religion of Sakya Muni is
below that of Jesus, as inspiring an exalted selfishness in
distinction to the generous sacrifice taught by Christianity; while it
is true that the best Buddhists lead a passive, submissive life which
made them easy spoil for conquering races and has not accomplished any
result in civilization since the first ancient subjugation; while
Buddhism with its mortification and self-centred goodness is even more
distasteful to the western race than the meditative dreamy asceticism
of Brahmanism: it is equally certain that these eastern religions are
far more really lived by their followers than Christianity is with us;
it must be admitted that a spiritual selfishness, which is so
thoroughly practiced as to bear all the fruits of generous love, is
preferable to a noble sacrifice, which is so largely precept as to
appear to the naked eye a civilized barbarism; and it is worth
considering whether Christendom may not gain as much by learning the
secret of Eastern superiority to materialism, as the Orient is gaining
by the infusion of Western activity. Travelers agree that in many
parts of inner China, Thibet, Central India, and Ceylon the daily life
of Buddhism is so like the realization of Christianity, as to give
strong support to the theory of the Indian origin of our religion.
There is a practical demonstration of what reincarnation will do for a
race, and a hint of the grander result which would accrue from
grafting that principle into the real life of the stronger Saxon,
Teutonic, and Celtic stock. Knowing the indestructibility of the soul,
the evanescence of the body, and the permanence of spiritual traits as
formed by thought, word, and deed, the whole energy of life is focused
upon purity of self and charity to others. To love one’s enemies, to
abstain from even defensive warfare, to govern the soul, to obey one’s
superiors, to venerate age, to provide food and shelter, to tolerate
all differences of opinion and religion, are guiding maxims of actual
life. They are as vitally and generally translated into flesh and
blood as in primitive Christianity or in Count Tolstoi’s flock.
Honesty, modesty, and simplicity prevail in these sections. Women are
held in the same esteem as in the ancient Sanskrit epoch, and children
are treated more beautifully than in many Christian homes. A lady
traveler, known to the writer, who witnessed this, said that if her
lot were that of a friendless woman, she knew no place on earth where
she would labor and dwell more happily than in Ceylon. As the
peasantry receive reincarnation in the simplest and extremest form of
human re-births in animal bodies, every living creature is regarded by
them as a possible relative. Gentleness to the animal creation abounds
as nowhere else in the world. It is a sin to kill any beast. It is a
virtue to offer one’s life for a distressed animal, as the popular
tradition holds that Buddha did in one life by throwing himself to a
famished tigress. Death is no object of dread, but a welcome
benefactor, transferring them forward in their progress to the goal of
rest. To die for any good purpose, as under the sacred Brahman car of
Juggernaut, or in some one’s behalf, is the common aspiration; so much
so that it is difficult for the missionaries to gain any feeling for
the death on the cross, as they think any one would easily suffer
that.

The Brahmans have for ages studied the problems of ontology and the
soul’s future, by severest introspection and acutest thought, to build
their system, which is a vast elaboration of religious metaphysics,
upon a theistic basis. Reincarnation is the cornerstone of this
structure. Many of the higher Brahmans are believed to have penetrated
the veils concealing past existences. It is related, for instance,
that when Apollonius of Tyana visited India, the Brahman Iarchus told
him that “the truth concerning the soul is as Pythagoras taught you
and as we taught the Egyptians,” and mentioned that he (Apollonius) in
a previous incarnation was an Egyptian steersman, and had refused the
inducements offered him by pirates to guide his vessel into their
hands. The common people of India are sure that certain of the
Brahmans and Buddhists are still able to verify by their finer senses
the reality of reincarnation. And many educated natives and resident
foreigners in India have witnessed evidences of this keen power of
insight associated with other extraordinary qualities which compelled
them to believe in it.

Brahmanism and Buddhism are practically agreed upon the philosophy of
reincarnation, as the great Buddhist revolt against priestcraft only
emphasized this doctrine. Every branch of these systems aims at the
means of winning escape from the necessity of repeated births. The
ardent and final desire of all is expressed by the words of the sage
Bharata:—

“And may the purple self-existent god (Siva),
Whose vital energy pervades all space,
From future transmigrations save my soul.”

There are, however, great differences in these two faiths as to the
means and the result. Both contend that all forms are the penance of
nature. They regard personal existence as an empty delusion and the
exemption from it as true salvation. The Brahman seeks Nirvana, which
is absorption in Brahm, as the reality at the heart of things; the
Buddhist considers this also unreal, and finds no reality but in the
silence and peace attained beyond Nirvana. In the Brahman’s paradise,
one is so free from desire that no need remains for perpetuating his
individual existence. But after that comes Pan-Nirvana, which is utter
inaction and disappearance, a condition so difficult for a Western
mind to comprehend that it persists in falsely calling it and Nirvana
alike—annihilation. The Buddhist’s one duty of life and the means of
attaining his goal is mortification, the extinction of affection and
desire. But the Brahman’s work is contemplation, illumination,
communion with Brahm, religious study, and asceticism. The creed of
Buddhism is universal; that of Brahmanism is exclusive. The Buddhist
saint may come from any class, for the _raison d’être_ of his faith is
the abolition of caste. But only the wearer of the sacred Brahman
thread can aspire to direct union with Brahm; the lower castes must
undergo painful fakir penances until they attain the Brahman estate.

Northern Buddhism has been defined as almost identical with
Gnosticism. It has spun a dense fabric of legend and speculation about
this central thought of the soul’s gradual evolution from the natural
to the spiritual. The Hindus believe that human souls emanated from
the Supreme Being, and became gradually immersed in matter, forgetting
their divine origin, and straying in bewildered condition back to him
through many lives, after a protracted round of births in partial
reparation. Having become contaminated with sin, we must work out our
release through earthly lives in the delusive arena of sense until the
reality of spiritual existence is attained. So long as the soul is not
pure enough for re-mergence into Brahm, we must be born again
repeatedly, and the degree of our impurity determines what these
births shall be. So closely is the account of the soul’s misdeeds kept
that it may pass through thousands of years in one or another of the
heavens in reward for good deeds, and yet be obliged later to descend
to earth for certain ancient sins. The Laws of Manu give a standard by
which the moral consequences of various human actions are measured
with great detail.[45] A more general doctrine is based on the
assumption of three Cosmic qualities—goodness, passion, and
darkness—in the human soul. On this ground Manu and other writers
built an intricate theory, providing that souls of the first quality
become deities, those of the second, men, and those of the third,
beasts.

The Hindu conception of reincarnation embraces all existence—gods,
men, animals, plants, minerals. It is believed that everything
migrates, from Buddha down to inert matter. Hardy tells us that Buddha
himself was born an ascetic eighty-three times, a monarch fifty-eight
times, as the soul of a tree forty-three times, and many other times
as ape, deer, lion, snipe, chicken, eagle, serpent, pig, frog, etc.,
amounting to four hundred times in all. A Chinese authority represents
Buddha as saying, “The number of my births and deaths can only be
compared to those of all the plants in the universe.” Birth is the
gate which opens into every state, and merit determines into which it
shall open. Earth and human life are an intermediary stage, resulting
from many previous places and forms and introducing many more. There
are multitudes of inhabited worlds upon which the same person is
successively born according to his attractions. To the earthly life he
may return again and again, dropping the memory of past experiences,
and carrying, like an embryonic germ, the concisest summary of former
lives into each coming one. Every act bears upon the resultant which
shall steer the soul into its next habitation, not only on earth, but
in the more exalted or debased regions of “Heaven” and “Hell.” Thus
“the chain of the law” binds all existences, and the only escape is by
the final absorption into Brahm.

While the Hindus generally hold that the same soul appears at
different births, the heretical Southern Buddhists teach that the
succession of existences is a succession of souls, bred from one
another, like the sprouting of new generations from plants and
animals, and like the new light kindled from an old lamp, the result,
but not the identity of the former. Another curious aspect of these
Indian speculations is the view of certain Northern Buddhists, who
divide eternity into gigantic cycles which shall at length bring
around again a precise repetition of earlier events. This is similar
to the grand periodic year of the Stoics and of the Epicurean
Atomists, and to the continual metempsychosis of Pythagoras, which
provided that the identical Plato would again and again, at certain
tremendous intervals staggering any one but a Greek or Hindu
metaphysician, appear at the same Academy and deliver the same
lectures, etc.

Zoroastrians and Sufi Mohamedans, with their usual antipathy to Indian
thought, limit their conceptions of reincarnation to a few repeated
lives on earth, which some of the Persian and Arabian mystics stretch
out to a larger number, but soon disappearing either back into the
original source or into darker scenes.

X.
EASTERN POETS UPON REINCARNATION.

Here shalt thou pluck from the most ancient shells
The whitest pearls of wisdom’s treasury.
EDWIN ARNOLD.

Young and enterprising is the West,
Old and meditative is the East.
Turn, O youth! with intellectual zest
Where the sage invites thee to his feast.

Eastward roll the orbs of heaven,
Westward tend the thoughts of men.
Let the poet, nature-driven,
Wander eastward now and then.
MILNES.

X.
EASTERN POETS UPON REINCARNATION.

All Eastern poetry finds a favorite theme in metempsychosis, and the
literature of India is thoroughly saturated with it. The fervent
passion, the subtle thought, the luxuriant imagery which permeate
Asiatic life are centred upon this common philosophy. But the best
portion of this enormous wealth of fantasy is withheld from us, simply
because of its revelry in this very thought which is generally
unattractive to the West. What oriental poetry enters our language is
chiefly erotic or epic, and the most characteristic of all is left for
the few educated natives to enjoy. We can therefore only select a few
representative gems from this unworked mine, illustrating the Muses of
India, Persia, and Arabia. Among the ancient Sanskrit epics are
discovered beautiful renderings of the thought of many births. The
delicacy and tenderness of Persian poetry furnish charming expressions
of the Zoroastrian aspirations for release from earthly bondages to
reascend homeward. The Arabian mysticism of the Sufis directs their
intense subjectivity into ecstatic phrasings of the same idea.

In the wonderful ancient Sanskrit drama “Sakoontala” by Kalidésa,
translated by Monier Williams, occur these passages:—

This peerless maid is like a fragrant flower
Whose perfumed breath has never been diffused.
A gem of priceless water, just released
Pure and unblemished from its glittering bed.
Or rather is she like the mellowed fruit
Of virtuous actions in some former birth
Now brought to full perfection.

That song has filled me with a most peculiar sweetness.
I seem to yearn after some long forgotten love.
Not seldom in our happy hours of ease
When thought is still, the sight of some fair form,
Or mournful fall of music breathing low
Will stir strange fancies thrilling all the soul
With a mysterious sadness and a sense
Of vague yet earnest longing. Can it be
That the dim memory of events long passed,
Or friendships formed in other states of being
Flits like a passing shadow o’er the spirit?

The Sanskrit “Katha Upanishad,” in Edwin Arnold’s rendering as “The
Secret of Death,” contains a full explanation of the Eastern doctrine.

For his noble sacrifice Yama (Death) grants to Nachikêtas the
privilege of asking three boons. After naming and receiving the first
two Nachikêtas says:—

“Thou dost give peace—is that peace nothingness?
Some say that after death the soul still lives,
Personal, conscious; some say, nay, it ends:
Fain would I know which of these twain be true,
By the enlightened. Be my third boon this.”
Then Yama answered, “This was asked of old,
Even by the gods! This is a subtle thing,
Not to be told, hard to be understood:
Ask me some other boon: I may not grant.”

Nachikêtas insists upon this, and will not accept the wealths, powers,
and pleasures which Death offers as a substitute.

Then Yama yielded, granting the great boon,
And spake: “Know, first of all, that what is Good
And what is Pleasant—these be separate!
By many ways, in diverse instances
Pleasure and Good lay hold upon each man!
Blessed is he who, choosing high, lets go
Pleasure for Good. The Pleasure-seekers lose
Life’s end, so lived. The Pleasant and the Good
Solicit men: the sage, distinguishing
By understanding, followeth the Good,
Being more excellent. The foolish man
Cleaveth to Pleasure, seeking still to have,
To keep, enjoy. The foolish ones who live
In ignorance, holding themselves as wise
And well instructed, tread the round of change
With erring steps, deluded, like the blind
Led by the blind. The necessary road
Which brings to life unchanging is not seen
By such: wealth dazzles heedless hearts: deceived
With shows of sense, they deem their world is real
And the unseen is naught; so, constantly,
Fall they beneath my stroke. To reach to Being
Beyond all seeming Being, to know true life—
This is not gained by many; seeing that few
So much as hear of it, and of those few
The more part understandeth not.
“The uttermost true soul is ill-perceived
By him who, unenlightened, sayeth: I
Am I: thou, thou; and the life divided: He
That knoweth life undifferenced, declares
The spirit, what it is, One with the All.
And this is Truth. But nowise shall the truth
Be compassed, if thou speak of small and great.
“Excellent youth! the knowledge thou didst crave
Comes not with speech: words are the false world’s signs.
By insight surely comes it if one hears.
Lo! thou hast loved the Truth, and striven for it.
I would that others, Nachikêtas, strove!
“Only the wise who patiently do sever
Their thought from shows and fix it upon truths,
See HIM, the Perfect and Unspeakable,
Hard to be seen, retreating, ever hid
Deeper and deeper in the uttermost;
Whose house was never entered, who abides
Now and before and always; and so seeing
Are freed from griefs and pleasures.”
“Make it known to me,” he saith,
“Who is HE? what? whom thou hast knowledge of.”
Then Yama spake:
“The answer whereunto all vedas lead;
The answer whereunto as penance strives;
The answer whereunto those strive that live
As seekers after God—hear this from me.
Who knoweth the word Om (which meaneth God)
With all its purports; what his heart would have
His heart possesseth. This of spoken speech
Is wisest, deepest, best, supremest. He
That speaketh it, and wotteth what he speaks
Is worshiped in the place of Brahm, with Brahm!
Also, the soul which knoweth thus itself
It is not born. It doth not die. It sprang
From none, and it begetteth none. Unmade,
Immortal, changeless, primal. I can break
The body, but that soul I cannot harm.”
“If he that slayeth thinks ‘I slay’; if he
Whom he doth slay thinks ‘I am slain,’ then both
Know not aright. That which was life in each
Cannot be slain nor slay. The untouched soul,
Greater than all the worlds (because the worlds
By it subsist); smaller than subtleties
Of things minutest; last of ultimates,
Sits in the hollow heart of all that lives!
Whoso hath laid aside desire and fear,
His senses mastered and his spirit still,
Sees in the quiet light of verity
Eternal, safe, majestical—his soul:
Resting it ranges everywhere: asleep
It roams the world, unsleeping: who, save I,
Know that divinest spirit as it is,
Glad beyond joy, existing outside life?
Beholding it in bodies bodiless,
Amid impermanency permanent,
Embracing all things, yet in the midst of all
The mind enlightened casts its grief away:
It is not to be known by knowledge: man
Wotteth it not by wisdom: learning vast
Halts short of it: only by soul itself
Is soul perceived—when the Soul wills it so
There shines no light save its own light to show
Itself unto itself: none compasseth
Its joy who is not wholly ceased from sin,
Who dwells not self-controlled, self-centred, calm,
Lord of himself. It is not gotten else.
Brahm hath it not to give.
“The man unwise, unmindful, evil-lived
Comes not to that fixed place of peace; he falls
Back to the region of sense life again.
The wise and mindful one, heart purified,
Attaineth to the changeless Place, wherefrom
Never again shall births renew for him.
Then hath he freedom over all worlds
And, if it wills the region of the Past,
The fathers and the mothers of the Past
Come to receive it; and that soul is glad:
And if it wills the regions of the Homes,
The Brothers and the Sisters of the Homes
Come to receive it; and that soul is glad:
And if it wills the region of the Friends,
The well-beloved come to welcome it
With love undying; and that soul is glad.
And if it wills a world of grace and peace
Where garlands are and perfumes and delights
Of delicate meats and drinks, music and song,
Lo! fragrances and blossoms and delights
Of dainty banquets and the streams of song
Come to it; and that soul is glad.
Whoso once perceiveth HIM that is
Without a name, Unseen, Impalpable,
Bodiless, Timeless, such an one is saved,
Death hath not power upon him.”

Although not an Asiatic poem in the ordinary sense, we do not hesitate
to place in this cluster Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia.” After the
festival scene in which the prince distributed prizes to the maiden
victors in the sports, and his love had centred upon Yasôdhara, the
last of the contestants, follow these lines:—